How to set default working directory in Emacs - troubleshooting

Question

I know this has been posted many times, but the solutions are not working for me. I\'ve tried the following solutions from this post (Changing the default folder in Emacs):<

Answer 1

Set your default-directory last in your init file, if you expect that setting to be useful after the init file is loaded.

If you also need it set earlier in the init file (e.g., so that some of your init-file code gets the right value) , then set it earlier too. When you do stuff in your init file, that stuff can change the variable value.

You can also use (setq-default default-directory "C:/Documents and Settings/USER NAME/Desktop/") (or whatever the directory name is), if you want that to be the default for every buffer.