Uninstall Notepad on Windows XP

"Windows automatically restores notepad if you copy over it or delete it.

One possibility is

1) Change Explorer view options to show system files

2) Delete Notepad.exe from:

C:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386
C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache
C:\WINDOWS\system32
C:\WINDOWS

3) Now you'll need to stop the file being copied again by excluding it from the restore\filelist.xml.

attrib -s -h -r %windir%\system32\restore\filelist.xml

edit the file %windir%\system32\restore\filelist.xml

now add the following lines to the excludes node of filelist.xml

<REC>%windir%\system32\notepad.exe</REC>
<REC>%windir%\notepad.exe</REC>

change the attributes back to hidden and read only.

attrib +r +h %windir%\system32\restore\filelist.xml"

You can actually REPLACE notepad.exe with another editor if that's what you want. You have to make sure to remove ALL copies of notepad.exe on the drive (such as the DLLCACHE) then replace the file. Windows will tell you about the problem but you can tell it to ignore and keep the file. I've done that before with editor2.exe.