Are all the completion functions in /usr/share/zsh/4.3.4/functions ?
There should be lots of files beginning with "_", as well as "compinit".
This is the function that should be running.
There are a lot of functions starting with _ in /usr/share/zsh/4.3.4/functions
If you remove .zcompdump,
running compinit should regenerate it but including "autoload" for all
the completion functions. If it doesn't it implies it hasn't found it.
If it's still not working, try removing the .zcompdump file and send the
output of running "autoload -Uz compinit; compinit".
Removing ~/.zcompdump and then manually running compinit manually did the trick. Now ~/.zcompdump seems to be populated nicely and I can create more zsh instances and it's working fine.
So then, I will formally thank you for your help! I was lost .. . I'm still not sure what caused this, but now I'm glad it's back.
Thanks again,
--
Peter Stephenson <p.w.stephenson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Web page now at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/p.w.stephenson/