Whenever I need to work on any computer for more than few minutes, I invariably download Notepad2 by Florian Balmer and follow a process adapted from Scott Hanselman’s post i.e.
- Extract the contents of the zip (viz. notepad2.exe and the config file) to system32 folder (so no messing around with PATH variables – too lazy to do that)
- Rt. Click on notepad2.exe and drag-drop within the same folder, which brings up the Context menu with the option to “Create a Shortcut here”. Select the option to create a new “Shortcut to notepad2.exe.lnk”
- Rename the shortcut to n.lnk
Now, whenever I need to run notepad, I just type “Windows-R, N, Enter” and as Scott puts it, helps me “save at least a few hundred “otepad’s” a day.” I prefer this method over the other method that involves renaming notepad2.exe to n.exe
However, a couple of days back I noticed that Start->Running ‘n’ brought up a UAC prompt, and also prevented drag-drop into the resultant notepad2 window.
Guessing that Windows might have updated my UAC rules, it was time to check out what had changed.
Notepad2.exe’s property displayed that Privilege Level had been updated to require Administrator privileges.
A quick change later, I was back to saving a few ‘hundred otepad’s a day.