How do you open text files which are opened with Notepad instead of UltraEdit? With a double click on the file in Windows Explorer or any other file manager?
The method with the file associations does not work for applications which call Notepad.exe with the file to open as parameter. Such applications often offers to configure the editor to use and Notepad is just the default if nothing other is configured by the user of such an application.
Replacing Notepad.exe itself with an application having the file name Notepad.exe is no good idea as Microsoft and other system/security protection applications do not like that for security reasons.
There is the great tool
ueFastStart which is designed for quickly passing a file name to a running instance of UltraEdit or starting UltraEdit with a file name if there is no running instance. This tool was written mainly for Total Commander, but works also from Windows Explorer.
It would be possible to replace Notepad.exe by ueFastStart.exe by renaming Notepad.exe to a different name and put into the Windows directory ueFastStart.exe with file name Notepad.exe. But I strongly advise you against doing this because of the Windows system files protection and Windows Side by Side mechanism. Notepad.exe is a Windows system component which should not be replaced by another application with file name changed to Notepad.exe. If you run a search for notepad.exe with full administrator privileges including system and hidden directories you will find several notepad.exe in Windows directory and its subdirectories.
So I recommend again associating to UltraEdit all file types you want to open in UltraEdit and reconfigure those applications which start Notepad.exe directly to start uedit32.exe instead (or ueFastStart.exe).
I have found out in the meantime that UltraEdit makes the file associations in Windows registry now always in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes and never in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes even if the user account has full administrator privileges. That's in general the better method, but not good for users using multiple accounts on same computer.
You can change the file associations also with Windows itself. But be aware that you have to manually restore the file associations made with Windows in case of uninstalling UltraEdit permanently. Open Windows
Control Panel, click at top right corner on
View by: Category and select
Large icons (or small icons depending on screen resolution), click on
Default Programs, click on
Associate a file type or protocol with a program. You get now displayed all file extensions (and protocols) registered in Windows registry and select another application for opening files of a specific type. UltraEdit should be already in the list of
Other Programs which must be just expanded by clicking on [+] symbol (or you browse to ueFastStart.exe in case you want to use this tool for opening a file always quickly in an already running instance of UE).
