Specifically, it says: Error while decoding: (invalid-state Bogus value for `default-process-coding-system' nil) Now, I can't say I know what I'm doing (or that this works on GNU Emacs), but this fixed it for me: 2006-05-20 Michael Sperber * uudecode.el (uudecode-decode-region-external): Use '(binary . binary) for `default-process-coding-system' instead of nil to keep `call-process-region' from barfing.