won't load TeX/LaTeX files

[bev]

Hi gang,

I just got emacs 22.2.1 (behind the curve, I know) and I experiencing
the usual breaking-in problems. Here's an annoying one I can't figure
out.

I'm running SUSE 10.2 on a toshiba satellite, i686.

Symptom: when I try to load one of my latex files (made with the
previous emacs version) I get this error msg: "Wrong type argument:
stringp nil".  When I look in the *Messages* buffer for more info, it
says: "vc-file-clearprops: Wrong type argument: stringp nil".
I tried to get clever and create a non-latex file and then change it
to latex and it told me that I didn't have a "latexenc" file.
 So I searched for latexenc, found that it helps latex deal with
different encodings, and that 22.2 has latexenc functions built-in. So
I think I may be getting somewhere, but, having spend a bunch of time
on this already, I thought I'd ask the good people here whether anyone
knows wtf is going on? I'm writing a dissertation and it would help if
I could work on it.

Oh yes, it's got nothing to do my my init file -> same behavior with
'> emacs -q'.

TIA

Bev