Okay finally problem solved. After some reading and trial&error, I stumbled upon this question which did it. The path separator slashes in the _vimrc are "\" by default. But they need to be "/". Thank you those who helped with their answers and comments.
The working _vimrc file is shown below -
"for pathogen
runtime ../vimfiles/bundle/vim-pathogen-master/autoload/pathogen.vim
execute pathogen#infect()
execute pathogen#helptags()
"for snipmate
let g:snippets_dir="$VIMRUNTIME/../vimfiles/bundle/sv-snippets/snippets"
set nocompatible
set textwidth=80
set formatoptions=cqrol
set ts=2
set expandtab
set guifont:Courier_New:h8:cANSI
set backupdir=$temp
source $VIMRUNTIME/vimrc_example.vim
source $VIMRUNTIME/mswin.vim
behave mswin
filetype plugin indent on
syntax on
autocmd BufEnter * setlocal cursorline cursorcolumn
hi cursorcolumn ctermbg=247 guibg=grey70
hi cursorline ctermbg=247 guibg=grey70
Some notes about this _vimrc -
- I call pathogen#helptags() in _vimrc because I am sure I shall forget it. I do not have too many plugins so this is not a problem.
- During the exercise I stumbled upon a way to locate pathogen in the bundle folder as well. Thank you Ted Reed for this. I haven't seen anybody talk about installing pathogen this way. But it's great because now the install is not corrupted even with the pathogen files.
- I did not see any differences in the behavior if I comment out the mswin related statements. But I left it in there because I do not completely know what they do and I have been using it this way for a longtime now without any issues.
The directory structure I use -
c:\program files\vim\vim74 - vim install, given by $VIMRUNTIME
c:\program files\vim\vimfiles\bundle - plugins such as pathogen, snipmate
c:\program files\vim\_vimrc