Re: loading init files, just a simple old .emacs file for starters

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 21:52:01 -0800 (PST)
> From: rickhw <rick.woolley@gmail.com>
> 
> 
> I have been using emacs for decades and have never had difficulty loading my
> .emacs file
> 
> but with this latest install on 64bit windows 7 with: 
> 
> GNU Emacs 24.0.50.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.1.7601) of 2011-04-02 on YAMALOK

This is a very old snapshot of Emacs 24.  Why not use the latest
pretest instead?  (However, I don't think this is the source of your
problems.)

> I cannot get it to load no matter where I put it, and I cannot even load it
> manually when I have it in the current buffer?

If you type

  C-x C-f ~/.emacs RET

do you see the contents of your .emacs file, or do you see an empty
buffer with a "(New file)" message in the echo area?  If the latter,
you didn't put your .emacs where Emacs expects to find it.

If the above doesn't help, please describe where you tried to put your
.emacs.