After trying the solution on the superuser discussion linked above, I found a solution to this problem:
Right-click on the notepad++.exe file, select Properties.
Click on the Compatibility tab, and select “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and select “Windows 8”.
Make sure “Run this program as an administrator” is unchecked.
Click OK.
However, this work-around was not working when I tried to run Notepad++ via an AutoHotKey shortcut; it still ran as Administrator. So here is another work-around using Windows Task Scheduler:
Open the Windows Start menu, search for “task scheduler”, and run that.
Click on the “Task Scheduler Library” item in the tree view on the left.
Click on the Action menu, then “Create Task…”. Type in a name for your task.
Under the General tab, click the “Change User or Group…” button.
Type in “Users” in the “Enter the object name to select” box and click OK.
Click on the Actions tab, then click on the “New…” button.
Click on the “Browse…” button, and find your notepad++.exe file and open that.
Click on the Settings tab and make sure “Allow task to be run on demand” is checked.
Click OK.
To make a batch file to run this scheduled task, you can put this command in a text file and name it with a “.bat” extension:
schtasks /run /tn *<name of your task from step 3 here>*
