Unable to have emacs load my .emacs file (version 24.5.1 on Windows 7)

[smits . gerard . j]

Hi Emacs users,

The issue is that I am not loading my .emacs file

I have just installed version 24.5.1 on my Windows 7 (running within Parallels 
on a Mac).  I currently have the same configuration on another machine, which I 
have been using for several years, and currently works fine.

My home environment variable is Z:\   within emacs, I can determine that this 
is what emacs believes is home (getenv "home") evaluates to z:\\.

Emacs knows the correct location of my user initialization file:

user-init-file is a variable defined in `C source code'.
Its value is "z:/.emacs"


My load path, which fits my directory structure, is:

load-path is a variable defined in `C source code'.
Its value is
("/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp" "z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/site-lisp" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/site-lisp" "z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/vc" "z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/url" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/textmodes" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/progmodes" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/play" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/org" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/nxml" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/net" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/mh-e" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/mail" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/leim" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/language" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/international" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/gnus" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/eshell" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/erc" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/emulation" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/emacs-parallel" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/emacs-lisp" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/cedet" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/calendar" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/calc" 
"z:/gs/emacs/share/emacs/24.5/lisp/obsolete")

When I invoke emacs with: emacs -debug-init:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (file-error "Cannot open load file" "no such file 
or directory" "auto-show")
  require(auto-show)
  eval-buffer(#<buffer  *load*> nil "z:/.emacs" nil t)  ; Reading at buffer 
position 734
  load-with-code-conversion("z:/.emacs" "z:/.emacs" t t)
  load("~/.emacs" t t)
  #[0 " \205\262

it does not seem to be able to find it.

I tried copying over my old version from my other machine (version 22.3.1) and 
have the same problem, so it does not seem to be version related.

Believe it or not, I am having similar problems on the Mac/unix side, but that 
is for another day.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks,

Gerard Smits