Hi, Even I have experienced the same problem and I thought it was something to do with my init/dotemacs file customization. Infact, I ended up writting a hook function for "change-major-mode-hook" and I do all sort of things after enquiring the mode type!! I never had to do this before (that was long back though ). The strange thing is when I check the "Options-Syntax Highlighting", I find the right options checked, I tend to belive my startup file is right. I am using 21.5 beta3 "asparagus" [Lucid] (i586-pc-win32, Mule) on Win NT SP4 compiled on my machine. with best regards, dhruva Vaclav Barta <vbar(a)comp.cz&gt; on 10/07/2001 04:17:39 PM To: xemacs-beta(a)xemacs.org cc: (bcc: Dhruva KRISHNAMURTHY/dassault-systemes) Subject: Syntax highlighting turned off on startup (3. try) This bug report will be sent to the XEmacs Development Team, not to your local site managers!! Please write in English, because the XEmacs maintainers do not have translators to read other languages for them. Please describe as succinctly as possible: - What happened. - What you thought should have happened. - Precisely what you were doing at the time. Please also include any C or lisp back-traces that you may have. ================================================================ Dear Bug Team! When I start XEmacs, the menu items Options|Syntax Highlighting|Automatic and Options|Syntax Highlighting|Force Rehighlight in this Buffer are checked, but the C++ (or Perl, or whatever language...) file I open shows in black until I do something in the Options|Syntax Highlighting menu, i.e. change Options|Syntax Highlighting|Most to Options|Syntax Highlighting|Even More . Then the existing buffer gets its syntax highlighted and also all newly opened source code files show in colors... ================================================================ Get more information on attending DELMIA's better-than-ever North American and European User Groups at http://www.delmia.com