Re: emacs won't start interactively

[Óscar Fuentes]

Joe Trivers via help-gnu-emacs <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> writes:

> I then installed mingw-w64 and ran the 64-bit emacs-26.1.exe with that
> gdb, and it also produced a perfectly cromulent emacs window. So
> apparently whatever goes wrong is cured by running under gdb.
>
> Any further thoughts about what might be happening here? And on how
> gdb could be making it work correctly?

If you execute emacs.exe instead of `gdb emacs.exe' from the same
command prompt you use for executing gdb, does emacs work? If you put at
the front of PATH the bin/ directory of mingw-w64 and then execute
emacs.exe, does it work?

If yes, your mingw-w64 install probably contains some dll that is broken
or missing from emacs/bin directory.

As for the output of Dependencies, it should mark in some prominent
color those dlls that are missing or don't contain a required symbol. It
is important that you invoke Dependencies from the same environment
(i.e. command prompt) you invoke emacs.exe.

Maybe the antivirus ate some of the dlls shipped with Emacs.

You mentioned that you installed Emacs 26.1. There are binary packages
for 26.2 (the most recent released version) on the gnu ftp server. If
all the above does not give a meaningful result, you could try that
version, just in case.

Are you using cmd.exe as your shell and terminal, or something else?

(This problem rings some bells here, but can't remember with certainty
what caused the same symptoms on some of my machines time ago.)