On the following: (make-directory-internal "c:/") emacs reports "Permission denied" rather than "File already exists". This has several consequences. First, (make-directory "c:/" t) should not error, but it does because it does not catch the "Permission denied" error. Second, while running make check in the current emacs-26 branch, there is a failure in files-tests.el directly related to the previous point. Suggestion: modify files--ensure-directory to catch the case of a root drive and avoid/catch the permission denied error. Best regards, Fabrice In GNU Emacs 26.0.60 (build 3, x86_64-w64-mingw32) of 2017-09-19 built on LOBSANG Repository revision: 4bd6e39c01ebdc815a5d0670922a827295766677 Windowing system distributor 'Microsoft Corp.', version 10.0.16288 Recent messages: For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. Entering debugger... is undefined previous-line: Beginning of buffer Configured using: 'configure --prefix=/MingW64 --with-jpeg --with-xpm --with-png --with-tiff --with-rsvg --with-xml2 --with-gnutls --with-imagemagick --without-dbus --enable-checking=no 'CFLAGS=-I/mingw64/include -O3 -g0 -mtune=corei7 -fomit-frame-pointer' CPPFLAGS=-I/mingw64/include LDFLAGS=-L/mingw64/lib' Configured features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG IMAGEMAGICK SOUND NOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS LCMS2 Important settings: value of $LANG: fr_FR locale-coding-system: cp1252 Major mode: Lisp Interaction Minor modes in effect: tooltip-mode: t global-eldoc-mode: t eldoc-mode: t electric-indent-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message subr-x puny seq dired dired-loaddefs format-spec rfc822 mml mml-sec password-cache epa derived epg epg-config gnus-util rmail rmail-loaddefs mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils help-mode easymenu cl-print byte-opt gv bytecomp byte-compile cl-loaddefs cl-lib cconv debug elec-pair time-date mule-util tooltip eldoc electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel dos-w32 ls-lisp disp-table term/w32-win w32-win w32-vars term/common-win tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode elisp-mode lisp-mode prog-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core term/tty-colors frame cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese composite charscript charprop case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev obarray minibuffer cl-preloaded nadvice loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote w32notify w32 lcms2 multi-tty make-network-process emacs) Memory information: ((conses 16 99907 11069) (symbols 56 20316 1) (miscs 48 65 98) (strings 32 30120 1035) (string-bytes 1 759473) (vectors 16 14922) (vector-slots 8 488682 7533) (floats 8 60 110) (intervals 56 314 8) (buffers 992 12))