Has anybody figured out how to do a NotePad replacement on Windows Vista, so that instead of NotePad.exe another editor is used? I like to use NotePad 2 and as I’m getting ready for a few presentations it helps to have line numbers displayed as part of source code – something that Notepad doesn’t do.

Anyway, I’ve always done this on XP where’s it’s relatively easy to do this by updating NotePad.exe in both the System32 and the Shadow protected files directory. However, on Vista this mechanism no longer works as the shadow copy directory either has moved or is no longer visible in any way. Copying the file ontop Notepad.exe just gets immediately replaced by the original version.

Has anybody gone and done this?

While we're at it, what are other people using for NotePad replacements. NotePad2 is nice primarily because it does Syntax Color highlighting for many of the common formats I use day to day, but otherwise NotePad2 is also a pretty plain editor. For example, it doesn't do multiple documents in the same editor window, it doesn't see file changes on disk, Shell Execution fires a new instance etc.

I also like TextPad which I've been using for many years which has the editor features, but the various Syntax coloring schemes are pretty week and a pain to install and carry across installations that I'm always kinda weary of it...

What are some of you using for a 'quick text editor' or more accurately a Text Viewer (which is 90% of what I use NotePad for)...