Multiple things don't work on Windows

[valrus]

I apologize for what is probably an unhelpfully broad issue, but I installed spacemacs on Windows (by moving my .emacs.d and replacing it with this repo) and basically nothing seems to work as "advertised" in the README. Some of the obvious problems:

• evil-mode doesn't seem to be on and I can't get to normal mode. ESC doesn't take me to normal mode. Neither does fd.
• Adding (evil-mode t) to the dotspacemacs/config function in my ~/.spacemacs does not cause evil-mode to work when I start Emacs either.
• After I turn on evil-mode with M-x evil-mode, none of the bindings in the README work. fd still does not leave insert mode. SPC does not work as a leader, which means none of the other bindings work either. They don't work even if I replace SPC with the evil-leader default of \.
• C-j etc. don't work when I bring up helm-M-x.
• Possibly related, but I'm not sure: Spacemacs says "Found 16 new package(s) to install" every time I start emacs up, which I've done several times today. Surely there aren't actually 16 new packages every time?
• powerline doesn't seem to work. I get a normal emacs modeline.

But there is evidence that parts of spacemacs do work:

• The color scheme is solarized, as expected.
• I get the cute little Ⓗ in the modeline.
• The expected packages do seem to be installed and operational. I can bring up Helm and turn evil-mode on without having to install those packages myself.

But still, none of the fancy things and helpful bindings in the README seem to work at all. Help! What am I missing here?

[syl20bnr]

@valrus Thank you for the detailed report. I was able to reproduce it. Seems that rainbow-mode does not install properly on Windows. I deactivated it and will investigate on the reasons why it triggers an error on Windows, I created #12 to track this.
Meanwhile spacemacs should now install properly on Windows and the issues you noticed should be gone.

[valrus]

Thanks for the quick fix. I had to restart Emacs several times to get through all the package installs after updating spacemacs, but that seems to have been a one time thing and it's working now.

I love the idea of Spacemacs BTW, I've been looking for a Vim-refugee-centric starter kit so this is right up my alley. Thanks for making it.

[syl20bnr]

@valrus You're welcome. Glad it works now for you.