Tom, I found it weird that you posted here, but probably the forums interface is not all too clear when you want to post a new topic.
It's very weird that 2.2.8 made _viemurc not be read. I didn't change anything in related code (although, of course, there might have been some mistake on my part). I have just checked it on my system, with ViEmu/VS 2.2.8, VS 2008, and my regular _viemurc in my home directory, and it works fine.
Just to make sure - ViEmu tries to read the file in four possible place/name combinations. It looks both in ViEmu's installation folder (alongside the main ViEmu.dll file), and also in your home directory (check the HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH environment variables to make sure where that is, it's usually C:\Documents and Settings\{username}, or C:\Users\{username} in Vista). In both of these places, it looks for both "_viemurc" and ".viemurc" (starting with an underscore or with a dot). The reason is that the Unix standard is a dot, but the Windows shell doesn't handle filenames starting with a dot very well.
Can you try to move or rename the file to see whether it still fails?
One other possible source of failure is Vista's "shadow files" feature. When you copy files in the "Program Files" hierarchy, it can sometimes actually copy the file in a shadow directory in your user area, to avoid cluttering the program's directory (some kind of security measure). The shell still shows the file there, but it's actually somewhere else (the hidden directory C:\ProgramData\... in some cases, in other installations it's somewhere else). I think it's an ugly, dirty hack on Microsoft's part, but what do I know. This happens most often when using some other file explorer to copy the file, instead of the Windows shell. The easiest way to fix this is to delete the file and copy it again with the windows explorer. Either that, or use the command line. Anyway, that could be the fix.
Let me know whether this fixes it. I apologize for the problems with R# colors -- unfortunately this is to the horribly broken system Microsoft applies when installing / uninstalling add-ins and packages, and there is nothing I can do to make the situation better. Hopefully you will have a stable system now.
- Jon