Thanks to Eli's suggestion I have more useful information about the problem, but I still have not solved it. It does not occur when I use the runemacs.exe program from a DOS box. For example this works correctly: cd c:\emacs\bin runemacs
I discovered this by first doing runemacs -Q , then runemacs -q , then just runemacs . Also, if after runemacs -q or -Q I run my emacs init file it still works correctly. (Note its name starts with an underscore not a dot as is usual) load-file ~/_emacs.elc The problem only occurs when I start emacs using the mouse: Start | Programs | Gnu Emacs | Emacs The Properties for the last node above says in part: C:\emacs\bin\runemacs.exe Which is the right place. One possible cause of the problem is that I first unzipped the installation into c:\emacs-22.3 and then ran the addpm.exe program in bin. When I decided things were working OK I renamed the top directory to c:\emacs and then run addpm again. I suspect something bad happened as a result of this. I think this should have worked, based on the install documentation at http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/Installing-Emacs.html which also says there is no uninstall program. (I think I want something that will reverse the action of addpm .) I ran regedit and looked for the string "emacs" in all the places in the registry but I did not notice anything suspicious, but I might have missed something. Then I thought the problem might be caused by something in C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch, but even after I deleted all 4 of these files the problem occurred. C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch>dir *emacs* 11/14/2008 01:11 PM 39,522 EMACS.EXE-02239F13.pf 11/13/2008 01:03 PM 44,668 EMACS.EXE-19E601C9.pf 11/14/2008 01:11 PM 6,544 RUNEMACS.EXE-0F338798.pf 11/13/2008 01:03 PM 5,946 RUNEMACS.EXE-37A43BDE.pf Eli also asked: But the files inside the RCS/ subdirectory do have the ,v suffix, right? The files in my RCS directory do NOT end with ",v". Is that a clue? I might have done something a long time ago to prevent that, but I cannot find anyplace. There is no environment variable that seems relevant and I do not seem to have any files like rcs.ini or .rcs etc. But maybe there is some such configuration file. Any ideas about that? Thanks, Steve -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Eli Zaretskii Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 5:53 AM To: Tolkin, Steve Cc: help-emacs-windows@gnu.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [h-e-w] problems with RCS rcsdiff and checkout co.exe inemacs 22.3.1 > Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:26:13 -0500 > From: "Tolkin, Steve" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > In the new emacs 22.3.1 I have some problems with the RCS utilities. > Below is the simplest example. I also have a problem doing a checkin > of an existing file after making an edit. This problem is a > "showstopper" for me using the new emacs. > In emacs I create a new file named e.g. foo22, type "foo", and "C-x s" > to save the file, and then "C-x v v" to checkin. > That all works as expected. The RCS/foo22 file is there and looks -OK. > (See below.) > > Then I say "C-x v v" again to checkout, but it fails, with this message: > vc-do-command: Running rcsdiff...FAILED (status 2) I cannot reproduce this on my machine, using Emacs 22.3 invoked with "emacs -Q". If you use "emacs -Q", does the problem persist? If "emacs -Q" doesn't work either, then please tell where did you get the ported RCS package you are using. Perhaps that port is somehow subtly incompatible with how Emacs invokes subsidiary programs. (I needed to roll my own port of RCS because the one I downloaded from GnuWin32 was buggy, and rcsdiff was indeed one of the problems. However, in my case, it didn't work even from the command line.) > I use an RCS directory (not the approach of having a ,v at the end of > the file name.) But the files inside the RCS/ subdirectory do have the ,v suffix, right?
