I like the old, classic Notepad program. I hate the new Notepad. One morning I arrived to work and found that during the previous evening, a Windows Update had been performed. I gritted my teeth. The update removed my beloved old Notepad and replaced it with the new Windows 11 Notepad abomination.

Here’s how I got my good old Notepad back. Note: these instructions assume that Windows has been configured to open files with a double-click instead of a single click. See image at very bottom of this page.

Note: See a similar post for restoring classic Paint: https://jamesmccaffreyblog.com/2024/10/19/how-to-restore-classic-paint-mspaint-exe-to-windows-after-an-update-removed-it-and-replaced-it-with-the-awful-new-windows-11-paint/

1. After the Windows Update, when I clicked on the Start button, my old Notepad was nowhere to be seen. It had been replaced by the completely over-engineered piece-of-dog-poop new Windows 11 Notepad. Who could have possibly thought this was a good idea?

2. I opened File Explorer and went to C:\Windows\System32 and scrolled down to the old Notepad.exe program, identified by the icon that looks like a partially opened paper notepad. I right-clicked on notepad.exe and clicked on the “Pin to Start” option.

3. I typed “Settings” on the Windows Start button and navigated to Apps | Advanced App settings | App execution aliases and then scrolled to the entry for the new Windows 11 Notepad, and switched the On/Off to Off.

4. I clicked on the Windows Start button and typed “notepad” into the search box. Both the new Windows 11 Notepad and the old classic Notepad appear. I right-clicked on the horrible Windows 11 Notepad and selected “Uninstall”. Note: if you want to reinstall the new Notepad at some point, go to the Windows Store and you can find and install it from there.

5. At this point everything should be almost hunky dory. If you double-click on a .txt file, it will open in good old Notepad.

6. However, there’s still a minor glitch. Suppose you want to open a file that doesn’t have a .txt extension in old Notepad, for example a file foo.cs (a C# file). If you run Notepad and then use the Notepad menu File | Open and point to the foo.cs file, it will open in Notepad as expected. But if you’re in File Explorer and right-click on file foo.cs and then click on Open With, you won’t see Notepad. In other words, the restored Notepad doesn’t show up in the context menu. You can fix this but it requires you to modify the Registry.

If you’ve used the Registry before, the fix is simple, but warning: very, very bad things can happen to your computer if you mess up the Registry.

Open Notepad, copy-paste the mini registry program below into it. Save it anywhere as “restore_notepad_context.reg” and then double-click on it to run it. You will see a warning that you can ignore. Now your Notepad is back in the context menu for Open With.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

;Restore Old Classic Notepad on Windows 11
;Created by Ramesh Srinivasan for Winhelponline.com
;Created on May 6, 2022; Revised on May 12, 2022.

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\notepad.exe]
"NoOpenWith"=-

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\notepad.exe]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\txtfilelegacy\DefaultIcon]
@="imageres.dll,-102"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\txtfilelegacy\shell\open\command]
@="C:\\Windows\\System32\\notepad.exe \"%1\""

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\notepad.exe]
"UseFilter"=dword:00000000

I found this registry program at http://www.winhelponline.com/blog/restore-old-classic-notepad-windows/. This site also has a link to a .zip file with a registry program to undo the registry changes in case something goes wrong.

Note: This image shows how to switch between single-click and double-click to open a file.

Every time I start a computer after a Windows Update, I grit my teeth to prepare myself for what Microsoft Update has done this time. I wonder how the Microsoft Update team would feel if the manufacturers of their automobiles were allowed to sneak over to their house at night and modify their cars to “update” them.