ESS finds R automatically when it is put in the default location
c:/Program Files/R/

It is up to you to tell ESS where R is if it is anywhere else.
See the paragraph in ess-site.el that contains the line
;;(setq-default inferior-R-program-name "C:\\Program
Files\\R\\R-2.5.0\\bin\\Rterm.exe")
Installation instructions for Windows are very simple.
Put ESS somewhere and in site-start.el tell ESS where with a line like this

   (load-file "/PATH/TO/THIS/FILE/ess-site.el")


On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 8:54 PM, Ross Boylan <ross@biostat.ucsf.edu> wrote:

> I recently had Windows 7 installed on a computer, and then R 2.15 and
> emacs 24.1.  ESS 12,04-4 is now working, but I thought I'd mention a couple
> of rough spots.  My hope is that this report might lead to some
> improvements in the installation  experience and documentation.
>
> I've installed and used ESS before on a number of linux and windows
> systems.  I think I've often used Vincent Goulet's packages for Windows,
> but since I already had emacs I didn't this time.
>
> First, I tried using emacs' new package management system, but ESS wasn't
> in it.  You might consider using that distribution channel.
>
> Second, when I went to download the file from http://ess.r-project.org/**
> index.php?Section=download<http://ess.r-project.org/index.php?Section=download>it was hard to find instructions.  The first paragraph says "To run ESS in
> Emacs you have to first download the compressed eLisp source files and
> install them according to the following instructions."  But there aren't
> really any instructions on the page.  Eventually I tried the link to the
> ESS manual at the bottom, although the description "Instructions on how to
> retrieve ESS in particular or how to work with Subversion in general can be
> found in the following documents:" was not too inviting.  First, it didn't
> say which was which (it's pretty easy to guess, but why add friction?  The
> git docs are clearly marked off); more importantly, my problem was not how
> to retrieve the code but how to install it.  After some searching around in
> the manual I found the relevant section, which is also in the README file
> at the top of the directory of the unpacked zip.
>
> Finally, when I followed the instructions to install, I got to the 2nd
> step and was happy about the "you're done."  When I tried to start R it
> didn't work ("rterm not found").  Only then I realized I did not have an
> ESS buffer, and even the instructions after the second step did not say how
> to deal with rterm trouble, except to email this list.  A little more
> searching solved that too, although the instructions contain one more
> pitfall, I think.  The paragraph above the one with (setq
> inferior-R-program-name "...") ends with the advice to "make sure to use
> backslashes, '\' since Windows requires them."  Despite that, the setq
> example uses forward slashes and I suspect backslashes would be interpreted
> as escapes by elisp and fail, unless doubled.
>
> I'm not sure if ESS is supposed to be able to find R automatically; I
> recall some discussion about that quite awhile ago.  FWIW, my installation
> was at c:/Users/rdboylan/Documents/R/**R-2.15.0/bin/i386/Rterm.exe.
> That's where the system adminstrator put it.
>
> Thanks for ESS!
>
> I don't need any particular response.
>
> Ross
>
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> ESS-help@r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/**listinfo/ess-help<https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/ess-help>
>

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