emacs failing to run c:\.emacs

Question

I have been using emacs for a long time in windows. (windows 10 on an HP laptop PC) My .emacs file is in c:.emacs.

Up until yesterday, the file was run whenever I started up emacs. But yesterday it failed to run, so I have to manually run it.

The .emacs (and _emacs) file is visible within emacs when I do a directory listing of c:

-rw-rw-rw- 1 Ray Voith None 6670 2014-06-14 .emacs

-rw-rw-rw- 1 Ray Voith None 6605 2014-06-14 _emacs

but is not visible within cygwin in directory /cygdrive/c I tried chmod 777 .emacs (also chmod 777 _emacs) within cygwin but it says

$ chmod 777 _emacs

chmod: changing permissions of ‘_emacs’: Permission denied

Ray Voith@laptop /cygdrive/c

$ chmod 777 .emacs

chmod: cannot access ‘.emacs’: No such file or directory

I have not intentionally done anything to the .emacs file.

Does anyone know why emacs would all of a sudden stop executing .emacs?

Answer 1

Set your MS Windows HOME environment variable to point to the folder where you store your init file (e.g., .emacs). This is apparently C:\, for you.

C:\ is the place where users put their init files in the past, but it is not necessarily the best place to do so. I recommend that you do this:

1. Set your to HOME environment variable to something like d:\usr\yourusername\. Your user name here can be any name you like. In other words, just set HOME to some folder explicitly.

   You can use System > Advanced system settings > Environment Variables > User Variables to do this. Just add a HOME variable if none is there.

2. Be sure to make yourself the owner of that entire folder, including all its subfolders.