Analysis of the issue It appears as if the underlying signal number to description conversion method is broken in emacs-27 on windows-nt causing the regression. Looking at the code, it looks like the issue is around the area which attempts to convert a signal number to a string description. On emacs version prior and including emacs-27, the conversion is done by directly accessing the _sys_siglist[] table provided in the unix systems, mapping signal numbers to signal descriptions, e.g. SIGINT -> "Interrupted". On native windows though, this table does not exist, and emacs simulates it in src/sysdep.c:init_signals() so as to conform with the rest of the code which expects this table to be there. init_signals() only populates the descriptions in the C table when emacs is not !initialized, i.e. during the dumping phase. When emacs is thus ran normally, it expects this table to have been loaded from the dump into memory. This table though does not appear to make it through to the dump in emacs-27. Having a look at the new pdumper, it looks like that it performs differently than its predecessor. It seems as if it only cover lisp constructs, while Unexec was also dumping the data section of the process from memory? If true then, it implies that this table is not eligible for dumping any more (since it is a C array), but should always be initialised when emacs is invoked by the user. This has a very simple solution, taking out the if (!initialized) line in src/sysdep.c:init_signals(): diff --git a/src/sysdep.c b/src/sysdep.c index f94ce4d492..5b4ec68e6b 100644 --- a/src/sysdep.c +++ b/src/sysdep.c @@ -1980,7 +1980,6 @@ init_signals (void) #endif #if !HAVE_DECL_SYS_SIGLIST && !defined _sys_siglist - if (! initialized) { sys_siglist[SIGABRT] = "Aborted"; # ifdef SIGAIO The ert test attached to this bug report then passes. The above is not an issue in emacs-28 because the conversion from signal number to description is delegated to Gnulib with Paul Eggert's df589d36817a8804d67f133890b2f453aefdf3c1 "Simplify by using Gnulib sigdescr_np module" commit.