Replace notepad with advanced Notepad2 in Win 7

The notepad.exe is a protected system file, still you can replace the notepad with notepad2 by applying some tricks. Notepad2 provides some more advanced features which are much useful for computer users.

You have to download Notepad2 and need to make some registry changes to your system to use Notepad2 as explained in this article.

Follow these steps to configure Notepad2-

• Download Latest Notepad2 ( ver 2 4.1.24 )
• Install it to specific folder, by default it'll be installed to Desktop. You can copy/paste the notepad.exe from desktop to any desired location.

Then Open registry editor and expand to following key-

HKEY_LOCA_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\

• Now Right-click on Image File Execution Options and click on New – Key, enter notepad.exe
• After that in the right-pane: Right-click and create a new string value:
• Give the string the name Debugger.
• Double-click on Debugger and enter the full path to the Notepad2.exe file,
• for e.g. “C:\Windows\Notepad2.exe” and add /z at the end! and then Complete path will be as: “C:\Windows\Notepad2.exe” /z

Most interesting feature of Notepad2 is that it allows execution in Transparent mode as shown below, and it also allow current line highlighted.

That's all done.