Here is a minimal setup that works on Windows and Mac (yes I use Emacs on Windows and it works well).
;; using an editor you are comfortable with
;; create c:/Users/USERNAME/AppData/Roaming/.emacs.d/init.el
;; and paste these contents in there:
;; NOTE: depending on how you start up emacs, your home directory may
;; be different than the one above. Your initialization file
;; needs to be saved at ~/.emacs.d/init.el (however that is mapped