Windows 10 Notepad.exe taking up Ram

[harshguy2002]

I'm not sure when this occurred but whenever I open Task Manager, I see notepad taking up my device's ram. I have never seen notepad running in background and I don't think it needs to do so. Is it a virus? If so how can I remove it permanently?

 

[Neemobeer]

Some things of note. Typically there will be an expander arrow since notepad always opens a document. Also the memory usage is pretty high unless a document is open. You could use Process Explorer to verify it's the real notepad in the correct location and do a Virus Total submission from process explorer as well as see if it has any open handles to files.

 

[Neemobeer]

I was able to replicate this behavior as follows

• Open a PowerShell console
• Run the following Start-Process -FilePath C:\Windows\Notepad.exe -WindowStyle Hidden (This creates a child notepad process to the powershell process)
• Close the PowerShell console (Killing the parent process leaves the orphaned notepad process)

My theory is that something opened a document with notepad and then the application that opened notepad was closed.