The site-specific pieces of the initial load-path are different in the nt/msysconfig.sh build from how they used to be with nt/configure.bat. In src/epaths.h (when built), PATH_SITELOADSEARCH is defined as: with nt/configure.bat: "%emacs_dir%/site-lisp;%emacs_dir%/../site-lisp" with nt/msysconfig.sh: "%emacs_dir%/share/emacs/24.3.50/site-lisp;%emacs_dir%/share/emacs/site-lisp" The former version was much more useful on Windows, allowing one to keep a bunch of Emacs installs in a single parent directory that also contains the site-lisp directory. As a workaround I tried configuring with "--enable-locallisppath=c:/emacs/site-lisp" but it didn't seem to have any effect. In GNU Emacs 24.3.50.1 (i686-pc-mingw32) of 2013-05-30 on 57172UHB Bzr revision: 112785 xfq.free@gmail.com-20130530092755-xhnwfx1wk3ueebnk Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 6.1.7601 Configured using: `configure --prefix c:/emacs/emacs-112785 --enable-locallisppath=c:/emacs/site-lisp CPPFLAGS='-I G:/usr/include' LDFLAGS='-L G:/usr/lib'' Important settings: value of $LANG: ENG locale-coding-system: cp1252 default enable-multibyte-characters: t Major mode: Lisp Interaction Minor modes in effect: tooltip-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 Recent input: M-x f i n d - l i b s i t e - s t a r t M-x r - e - b Recent messages: For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. find-library-name: Can't find library site-start Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort nadvice gnus-util mail-extr emacsbug message format-spec rfc822 mml easymenu mml-sec mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils thingatpt find-func time-date tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel dos-w32 ls-lisp w32-common-fns disp-table w32-win w32-vars tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list newcomment lisp-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core frame cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev minibuffer loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote make-network-process w32notify w32 multi-tty emacs)