It really drives me nuts that you can’t delete Notepad.exe in Windows 2000. Oh, you can, but only if you really muck around with your files. Here is a tutorial on getting rid of the pesky application. Note that you must delete the notepad.ex_ file from your I386 directory before you try to delete the copies in C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DLLCACHE, C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32, and C:\WINNT. If you don’t, it will just keep raising itself from the dead. I love the fact that when you finally manage to rid yourself of the world’s least-feature-packed text-editor, the Windows 2000 Operating System makes a dire warning that a file integral to system stability has been replaced with a different version. And then, when you tell it that you did it on purpose and you’re not just a bozo screwing around in your system files, it warns you that you’re being a bad, bad little hacker. Great Caesar’s Ghost! It’s not like I’m trying to get into the Pentagon, y’know? I just like EditPad better.
Note that mucking around with your registry is most likely not going to help much. I’ve tried several times to change registry settings to simply avoid notepad instead of deleting the file. Doesn’t work. As long as the file exists in the above locations (in Win2000, at least) it will ignore and / or undo whatever changes you make to the registry. Crazy, huh? If you do want to try to change your notepad registry settings, look for the strings “C:\WINNT\notepad.exe %1” and “%SystemRoot%\System32\NOTEPAD.EXE %1”.