Following Installing Emacs, I set HOME environment variable to a directory (c:), and make a _emacs file in the directory. It has this one line of code (server-start).
When I execute emacs (GNU Emacs 23.3.1 (i386-mingw-nt6.1.7601)), I get this error message.
Warning (initialization): An error occurred while loading `c:/_emacs':
error: The directory `~/.emacs.d/server' is unsafe
What's wrong with this?
Emacs - Error when calling (server-start) has the answer.
"The problem is the ownership of the directory ~/.emacs.d/server when you also have “Administrators” rights on your account. Create the directory ~/.emacs.d/server and set the owner of this directory to your login name and the problem is gone.
Are you running on Windows 7 (or perhaps Vista)? At some point after XP, Windows decided that putting things in c:\ is a no-no. I guess for security reasons. If you don't set a home environment variable, then emacs will look for your .emacs in c:\users\yourname\appdata\roaming (or something like that - Win 7 machine w/emacs is at work, can't check exactly). You can also create your .emacs.d directory there too if you want.
At the very least, the message is not clear enough. Probably, Emacs should not simply barf this way. In any case, my advice would be to use M-x report-emacs-bug to let the Emacs developers know about this. Hopefully they will address the problem one way or another -- at least provide a more helpful message to users.
