Why would W32 Emacs insert "/Application Data/Application Data/" into a filepath starting with ~/ when I use C-x C-f?

I just installed Emacs Speaks Statistics, which is when this error started showing up. Uninstalling hasn't fixed it.

When I use C-x C-f, I can navigate normally, but when I actually press enter, Emacs seems to insert "/Application Data/Application开发者_开发技巧 Data/" after "~" in all paths, e.g. if I navigate to:

c:/Documents and Settings/admin/My Documents/sig.html

And press enter, I open:

~/Application Data/Application Data/My Documents/sig.html

Any idea what variables I can edit to fix this?

Check your HOME variable. Maybe it points to c:/Documents and Settings/admin/Application Data

The function that expands file names is : expand-file-name

This seems to be a botch-up between current and cached values related to $HOME. The problem is that the pattern used to match the home directory isn't the same any more.

At some point (setq filename (abbreviate-file-name (expand-file-name filename))) messes up the name.

Here's a work-around I whipped up and added to .emacs, _emacs, .emacs.el or Application Data.emacs.d\init.el to get the abbreviated-home-dir back in shape:

Don't forget: do not byte-compile your init file or you may be out-of-sync.

;;; files.el mistakenly initializes abbreviated-home-dir just once
;;; not realizing that its value should change when HOME is redefined.
;;; Thus abbreviated-home-dir is "^c:/Documents and settings/USER/Application Data\\(/\\|\\'\\)"
;;; when it should, now, be "^c:/Documents and settings/USER\\(/\\|\\'\\)"
;;; Then when you try to open "^c:/Documents and settings/USER/Application Data/"
;;; The name is abbreviated to "~", but expanded back to "c:/Documents and settings/USER/"
;;; losing part of the name ("Application Data/")
;;; 
;;; Rather than explicitly re-initialize abbreviated-home-dir, it should be set to nil
;;; (setq abbreviated-home-dir "$foo") ;; Impossible pattern match.
;;; This causes the filepath to never match, and ~ is never abbreviated.
;;;
;;; We _could_ explicitly initialize it:
;;; (setq abbreviated-home-dir "^c:/Documents and settings/badgerb\\(/\\|\\'\\)")
;;; But this is a bad idea.  It is _highly_ dependent on the workings of files.el, and it
;;; seems better to me to just clear the value and let files.el re-initialize it.
(setq abbreviated-home-dir nil)

Emacs changed the default location of home in recent releases -- the new default is what you're seeing. Explicitly set env var HOME to whatever you want and things will be OK.

You might be able to change this behavior by using M-x setenv. For example:

M-x setenv <RET> HOME <RET> c:/Documents and Settings/admin

If that works, you can add

(setenv "HOME" "c:/Documents and Settings/admin")

to your init file for a more permanent solution.