You will want at least 35 megabytes free on your hard drive.

To install NT Emacs on your computer running Windows 95, Windows NT, or later, do the following:

• Insert the CD-ROM into your CD-ROM drive. It's label is "STYEMACS24".
• From the command line or from "My Computer", go to "d:\opt\emacs\20.3\install\SETUP.EXE" (where d: is the DOS drive letter of your CD-ROM drive).
• Click on or execute "Setup.exe".
• The installation program will offer to install NT Emacs to "C:\Emacs.20.3.1". You may install there. If you wish to be consistent with a Unix or Linux installation (as I suggested on page 25 of the book), use the "browse" button to select another directory. Make a note of your installation directory; you will need it. We'll refer to it as your "Emacs20.3.1" directory later on.
• If the directory you select doesn't exist, the installation program will offer to make it for you. Accept, and hit "Next".
• There is only one component to install, the binaries. Just hit "Next" to accept. The install program should then copy data from the CD-ROM to your hard drive. It will open a window on the new "GNU" entry in your start menu, which will have one entry, an icon for NT Emacs.
• You can then read the latest news, or start NT Emacs from the install program. Unless you are upgrading from a previous version, you can probably skip the latest changes. Hit "Finish" when you are done.
• Under the "Emacs20.3.1" directory, make an empty directory called "lock". GNUS and several other modes use this directory for temporary storage. You will also want a directory called "site-lisp" for your own programs later on.
• You will also have to add the "Emacs20.3.1" directory to your path and add a variable, HOME, to your user environment and add the executables directory to your path.

  Setting the Environment on Windows NT

  • On NT 4.0, right click on "My Computer" ->Properties ->Environment. Edit your home directory into your user environment. To be sure that you are in the user environment, select an existing user variable first, then edit over it to make the home variable. Hit the "Apply" button when you are done to make the change permanent.

    While you are at it, insert the bin directory into your path environment variable. You will also want Emacs' bin directory in your path. This will be "emacs20.3.1\bin". Again, hit the "Apply" button.

    If you have a command line window or NT Emacs open, you will have to close it and re-open it to make these changes effective. Other apps will see the change immediately.

  • Setting the environment on Windows 2000 is very similar to Windows NT 4.0.

  • On Windows 95, edit your autoexec.bat to amend the path statement (if necessary) and to create the HOME variable. In my autoexec.bat, I have something like the following:

    rem used by emacs, lynx, and probably others
    set HOME=C:\CRC
    
    PATH=C:\Emacs20.3.1\bin;%path%

    Be very careful that your path does not exceed 127 characters in total length. If it does things will fail with no warning.

    You will have to reboot to effect the changes to autoexec.bat.