Some time ago, Jan Vroonhof wrote... This suggestion really helped! Thanks! :) strace also helped, it was stuck on DNS resolution, repeatedly bombing DNS servers with a query. When I changed DISPLAY from :0.0 to 127.1:0.0, XEmacs started just fine. I can use -debug-init now, and here is the backtrace I get upon startup, just `./xemacs -debug-init': Singaling: (wring-type-argument stringp, nil) substitute-in-file-name(nil) load(nil t t t) load-user-init-file() load-init-file() command-line() normal-top-level() I'll try to look into that, but not immediately. Does it look familiar? Big K