Hi all, and thanks for sticking with such novice level questions. But I'm
sure there are other emacs/windows challenged folks out there who can learn
from my mistakes.
After reading these posts, and knowing that the problem was with the PATH
variable under Environment variables, I fiddled with it enough, and NOW IT
WORKS! YEAH!
For other newbies who are using a Windows version of Emacs (I'm using emacs
21.3) and want to utilize the diff tools, here's how you do it:
1) have emacs installed
2) find a diff utils that you want to use. I downloaded mine from
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html (clikc on the link
"DiffUtils")
3) install these in some folder (I did mine at C:\Program Files\GnuWin32,
such that the actual programs are at C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin)
4) Now you need to let emacs know where to find the diff.exe tool. To do
this in Windows XP, go to your Control Panel -> Performance & Maintenance ->
System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables
5) Now hit "New" for "User variables". Type "PATH" in "Variable name" and
type where your diff tool is under "Variable value". E.g., for me, in
"Variable value" I typed "C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin"
6) click all the OKs to get out.
7) diff tools should now be available in emacs.
Thanks again for all your help