problems with tramp in NT Emacs

[Eric S. Johansson]

GNU Emacs 22.2.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600) of 2008-03-26 on RELEASE
I'm having a bunch of problems getting tramp to run and in my effort to debug
what's going on, reduces the system to ever greater chaos with increasingly
discouraging error messages.  Right now, it's telling the "symbols of function
definition is void: nil".  turning to the messages file, I see:

tramp-maybe-open-connection: Symbol's function definition is void: nil

Here's my.Emacs file.

(custom-set-variables
  ;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom.
  ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
  ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
  ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
 '(python-use-skeletons t)
 '(save-place t nil (saveplace))
 '(show-paren-mode t)
 '(tramp-debug-buffer t)
 '(tramp-default-method "c:/Program Files/PuTTY/plink.exe")
 '(uniquify-buffer-name-style (quote forward) nil (uniquify)))
(custom-set-faces
  ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
  ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
  ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
  ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
 )

any ideas?  I really don't want to have to edit UNIX files through an SMB mount
point.

Thanks for any help.

---eric