efs-load appears to slow down package loading under cygwin by a considerable amount. For instance without efs jde takes about 7 seconds to load, with efs it takes 40 seconds. There is a comment in the code about possibly adding file-name-handler-alist support to Fload in C. Would this make a difference? andy --------------------------------------------------------------------------- " .sigs are like your face - rarely seen by you and uglier than you think" Dr Andy Piper, Technical Architect, Parallax Solutions Ltd mail: andyp(a)parallax.co.uk web: www.parallax.co.uk/~andyp