Re: won't load .emacs init file

["Lennart Borgman (gmail)" <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

paul.mead wrote:
> On Aug 1, 9:38 am, "Lennart Borgman (gmail)"
> <lennart.borg...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> paul.mead wrote:
>>> On Jul 31, 11:33 pm, "Lennart Borgman (gmail)"
>>> <lennart.borg...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> paul.d.m...@googlemail.com wrote:
>>>>> On Jul 31, 3:00 pm, paul.d.m...@googlemail.com wrote:
>>>>>> I'm running emacs under cygwin. For some reason my .emacs file is
>>>>>> being ignored.
>>>>>> The environment variable for HOME is reporting correctly as /home/
>>>>>> paul. That is where I have placed my .emacs file. I have tried running
>>>>>> using --debug-init and it reports no errors.
>>>>>> I have evaluated every line in the file in turn and they all work
>>>>>> fine. It is as if it's running emacs -q, but there are NO aliases set
>>>>>> or scripts which could be running instead.
>>>>>> Close to my wits' end. Can you help?
>>>>>> Thanks
>>>>> Additional information - running M-x load-file ~/.emacs loads the init
>>>>> file perfectly, it just doesn't load when I start emacs.
>>>> Do you mean that if you start with
>>>>    emacs -Q
>>>> then the M-x load-file ~/.emacs works?
>>> No, I just srart with
>>>       emacs
>>> but loading the ~/.emacs file manually sets the config up ok.
>> If you start with
>>
>>    emacs
>>
>> instead of
>>
>>    emacs -Q
>>
>> then there is the possibility that something in your site-start.el or
>> default.el changes HOME.
> 
> Just tried that option - I get a message "Unknown option `-Q'

That means you are running a quite old version of Emacs. Maybe the best 
way to proceed would be to upgrade your Emacs (if that is possible)?

> Using emacs -q has the usual effect (in my case no different to using
> just emacs)
> 
> Using getenv, I can see that my HOME environment variable is reporting
> corrcetly as /home/paul. I can't find how to get the value of user-
> init-file.
> 
> I don't know if this is relevant - I tried to run Customize and change
> a value in there. When I tried to save changed is gave me an error
> message "Saving settings from "emacs -q" would overwrite existing
> customizations" - that suggests that I am using emacs -q to start, but
> I'm not. There are no aliases set, is there anywhere else that a
> configuration file could be hiding?
>