Windows 10: Notepad.exe / In two Windows 10 folders

Good day,


For some reason I have two byte-wise identical copies of Notepad.exe.

One in C:\Windows and one in C:\Windows\System32.

If I launch C:\Windows\Notepad.exe, it does not display the 'Notepad icon' but instead the generic program icon, as shown below:





For comparison, the C:\Windows\System32\Notepad.exe, appears as shown below:





Which Folder is the 'official' one?


I cannot help but suspect that one of the executables C:\Windows\Notepad.exe might be something nasty.

Windows' Antivirus is and always has been on and it did not complain anything when I scanned these files.


Thank you in advance for any advice.



PS. Below is the Windows version information




:)

 

Windows 10 Tweaks

Pressing “Windows+Pause Break” (it’s up there next to scroll lock) opens the “System” Window.

Windows 10: In the new version of Windows, Explorer has a section called Quick Access. This includes your frequent folders and recent files. Explorer defaults to opening this page when you open a new window. If you’d rather open the usual This PC, with links to your drives and library folders, follow these steps:

• Open a new Explorer window.
• Click View in the ribbon.
• Click Options.
• Under General, next to “Open File Explorer to:” choose “This PC.”
• Click OK

credit to Lifehacker.

 

Notepad

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community. Appreciate your interest in using Windows 10.

I suggest you to follow the steps provided below:

• Open Task Manager. Here’s a tip: press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.
• Click on Startup tab.
• Select Notepad from the list and click on Disable.

Hope the information is helpful. Feel free to write to us
for any other assistance with Windows, we’ll be glad to assist you.

 

Windows 10 Character Map and Notepad

Well I found the answer to my question. I should have thought through this a little longer.

Notepad is native in ANSI mode.
However Wordpad can work in UTF-8 mode.
I found steps to make Notepad usable in UTF-8 mode but there are a lot of steps and once again there has to be a registry hack to make it work.
Now how do I make Workpad be listed in the most used application through the Start Menu?