getting gnus up and running to read IMAP - HOWTO?

[Erwin Panen]

Hi everybody,

Just recently got hooked on emacs, so bear with me :-)
Working in a mixed environment, but M$ XP for the moment.
I'm trying to start using gnus to:
        a. connect and read my imap mail
        b. connect and read news (gmane)
At first I had some settings in my .emacs for news.gmane.org
This worked fine (I think :-) )apart from the fact that I have to master 
 gnus to be able to really use it...

Next I wanted to connect to my IMAP server (fastmail.fm)
I managed to get up and connect to the imap server. (setq secondary 
methods...)
Then I received my first error:
- news settings were getting in the way
In order to try and advance, I uncommented my news.server.settings in 
.emacs and tried to focus on imap.
No go, I kept having errors.
- [gnus-read-active-file: Wrong argument: sequencep, ssl ]
- [execute-extended-command: symbol's value as variable is void:...]
 were two of them, don't remember the sequence exactly.

At a certain point I received a message about bytecompile, as I have no 
clue about what I was doing, I searched, and issued:
##----------------------------------------##
C-u 0 M-x byte-recompile-directory

will compile all the .el files in the directory and in all 
subdirectories below.

The C-u 0 part is to make it not ask about every .el file that does not 
have a .elc counterpart.
##----------------------------------------##

After this when I fire up emacs, and issue M-x gnus, I get this in the 
message buffer:
Source file `k:/home/emacs-23.1/lisp/gnus/gnus.el' newer than 
byte-compiled file
execute-extended-command: Symbol's value as variable is void: 
news\.gmane\.org

Can someone point me to where I'm going wrong, or to a fairly 'simple' 
howto on how to get gnus going with my imap server?
I do realize one can put config info in several places:
- .emacs
- .gnus
- gnus.el
but that's about as far as my understanding goes at the moment...

Any help greatly appreciated!

Erwin