Never mind my previous messages about nesting errors etc. - I am pretty sure that I have not set up the init file correctly to go with the particular version of Lisp (Franz/Allergo) that I will be using. Because I am running it on Windows apparently more steps are needed. Randy Burgess wrote:

I am brand new to Slime, not entirely new to Emacs. Trying to install Slime 2.0 in either Emacs 22 on XP or Emacs 21 on Cygwin, and with both I get the same two errors - "Lisp nesting exceeds max-lisp-eval-depth" and "Variable binding exceeds | max-specpdl-size," both related to tramp-file-name-handler.