I used XP for ages with UE as the notepad replacement.

I just "upgraded" to Vista Home Premium, and the "old" method of replacing notepad doesn't seem to fit, as the dllcache folder is gone, and they've changed the WFP methodology (haven't they?).

So now how do I replace notepad,exe with UE?

Regards,
Chuck Billow

It's no problem to replace notepad.exe using Vista, but since you do not have full access to notepad.exe by default (even if you are an administrator) you have to change the permissions first. To do that you have to take ownership of "windows\notepad.exe" and "windows\system32\notepad.exe" and then replace the files. I did this and it's working fine. The only difference using XP is that you have full access to notepad.exe by default and you also have the dllcache directory.

To take ownership right click the file from windows explorer, select "Properties" and then the "Security" tab. Then you click the "Advanced" button and select the "Owner" tab. The default owner is "TrustedInstaller", but you can change it by clicking the "Edit" button, select a new owner from the list and click ok or apply. If the preferred user account or group is not listed click the "Other users and groups" button. Then you probably have to click ok all the way back to windows explorer, right click the file, select Properties and the Security tab again. Now you should have full access to change the permissions of the file, but as the owner you have full access so no need to make any more changes. If you do this for notepad.exe in the Windows and Windows\system32 folder you should be able to replace the files with an UE notepad replacement file. To change the owner you have to be a member of the administrators group on the computer of course. Maybe rename the old notepad.exe is a good idea "just in case". When I did this I saw no warning/attempt to restore the file like when using Windows XP which I found a bit surprising. I expected that replacing a file in the windows directory using Vista should be very hard to do.

I assume you are logged on as a local administrator. If the account you use to logon is not an administrator then you cannot change the owner. I also assume the computer is not member of a NT or AD domain.

Do you have User Account Control disabled? If that's on it stops you from doing all sorts of things.

Cheers...

Frank

I'm pretty sure that I had UAC enabled when I did this change, but not 100% sure so maybe you are right. Also I don't use Windows Defender, but I doubt that windows defender block this operation. Windows help have some more information about taking ownership of files and objects.....maybe there is some more useful details to be found there.

I cannot remember that I did anything to be able to take ownership of the file and according to windows help an administrator should be able to take ownership of any object.

I am set as an Administrator.

If I'm in WINDOWS and I right click notepad.exe, and select the Security tab, it shows

Object name Notepad.exe

Group or User Names
-
System
Administration
Users
Trusted Installer

And in Permissions for Administrators it shows only "Read/Execute" and "Read".

That is correct and that is why you need to change the owner because the "Administrators" groups do not have full access by default. As described you should click the "Advanced" button when you have the security tab open, then click to open the "Owner" tab and then click on the "Edit" button. Did you follow these steps and if yes please tell me where it stops and what happened. When you look at the security tab you don't see who is the owner and cannot change it directly under the security tab either. The owner doesn't need any further permissions since the owner always have full access even if not listed under the security tab so when you managed to change the owner you can ignore the permissions under the security tab. Every object when using NTFS has an owner (files, folders and other objects), but as an administrator you can change the owner. The owner of notepad.exe is Trustedinstalled by default and you have to change that to be able to replace notepad.exe.

Well, obviously I did something wrong before, because I printed out the instructions, and re-did the steps, and this time all went as described.

Sorry, and thanks to all.

Regards,
Chuck Billow

I'm not sure why the file is replaced by the original notepad.exe after a reboot. I presume you replaced both "windows\notepad.exe" and "windows\system32\notepad.exe" and not just one of them?
I did some research and couldn't find anything that can explain why the original notepad.exe where restored on your computer, but not on mine. Using Windows XP you have WFP (Windows File Protection), but using Vista or 2008 Server they call it WRP.

Parts of this is info from the MS website:

WRP protects files with the following extensions that are installed by Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista: .dll, .exe, .ocx, and .sys. In addition WRP protects critical files that are installed by Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista that include a lot more extentions then those listed above.
WRP copies files that are needed to restart Windows in the cache directory located at %Windir%\winsxs\Backup. Critical files that are not needed to restart Windows are not copied to the cache directory. Vista also use ACL (the permissions) to prevent even administrators full access to files installed by Vista.

According to this info and the fact that notepad.exe is not needed to restart windows i would assume it's not copied to the cache directory. I Couldn't find any copies of notepad.exe under "windows\winsxs\backup" on my computer, but you could check on your computer to see if it's there (check the sub directories and include hidden/system files as well). I found some copies of notepad.exe on my computer under some sub directories in the "windows\winsxs" directory (those files where not under the backup directory though), but i didn't do anything with those copies.
If you find some copies under winsxs\backup you might have to delete that file and probably required to change the ownership on those file as well if copies of notepad.exe is found somewhere under the backup directory. I also remember when using XP that i had to delete the file from the dllcache directory, system32 and windows directory. In addition i had to make sure that the windows installation CD where not available to windows to prevent the file from being restored from the installation media. So make sure Vista have no place to find the original notepad.exe.

What I did on my computer is to change the ownership of notepad.exe in the windows and system32 directory. Then I renamed or copied the original notepad.exe to notepadw.exe in both directories before I copied the notepad replacement file into both windows and the system32 directory. I cannot remember if I renamed or copied the original notepad.exe to notepadw.exe. I restarted the computer a lot of times after this operation and never had any issues.
My current notepad.exe (the notepad replacement file) in my windows and system32 directory have the following permissions: SYSTEM, Administrators and Users have read and execute. TrustedInstalled have full access.

I also found this information: forum.soft32.com/windows/Undeletable-folders-ftopict362046.html
So using the info found here it should be easy to create a bat/cmd file that take ownership and replace notepad.exe by running the batchfile instead of doing all of this manually.

If this info is of no help I'm not sure why this happen on your computer since I'm unable to see the same problem on my computer. I tried using a second computer with Vista as well, but had no problems replacing notepad.exe and after a reboot I still found the replacement file under windows and the system32 directory. My windows Vista installation is not preinstalled, but a clean install using a original Windows Vista OEM DVD.Some of the preinstalled windows installation might have some special/strange setup.

Cheers
Gann

I went all through it again... this time adding the notepadw.exe to both folders. Now it seems to be holding.

It would be nice if MS just said "Do you want us to protect your files, or do you want to do it?" and then left it the heck alone!

No problem, glad to hear it's working. You can also use the dos command "takeown" to take ownership of files and then you can create batchfiles instead of doing this manually that can be helpful some times. "takeown /?" should show you some instructions how to use it.

Cheers
Gann

I have the old notepad.zip that IDM use to offer to replace Notepad.exe. I was wondering if there was something similar for x64 systems or I can still use the old file?


Thank you!

Any new infos?

I'm also interested in notepad replacement, also on windows 7 x64.

tia,
sely

I ended up copying the notepad.exe that IDM used to supply into C:\Windows and C:\Windows\System32. It works OK so far ... but I would love an official word from IDM.