When I run Emacs, nothing happens. Whats the deal?
Emacs could have failed to run for a number of reasons. The most common symptom is that, when Emacs is started, the cursor changes for a second but nothing happens. If this happens to you, it is quite likely that the distribution was unpacked incorrectly. Check for the following to see if there was a problem during unpacking: • Be sure to disable the CR/LF translation or the executables will be unusable. Older versions of WinZipNT would enable this translation by default. If you are using WinZipNT, disable it. • Check that filenames were not truncated to 8.3. For example, in Emacs 19.34.6 there should be a file lisp\term\win32-win.el (it has been renamed to w32-win.el in Emacs 20); if this has been truncated to win32-wi.el, your distribution has been corrupted while unpacking and Emacs will not start. • I’ve also had reports that the GNU Windows port of tar corrupts the executables. Use the version of tar on my ftp site instead. If you are in doubt about whether the utilities you used
