cygwin / vista32 bash.exe has stopped working

Question

Our work machines are moving to vista so I am struggling through installing cygwin. After setting the proxy on the installer manually instead of using "use IE5 settings" and running the following command: mkpasswd -l -c > /etc/passwd; mkgroup -l -d > /etc/group

I finally have a "working" version of cygwin.

However, when I type exit to kill the shell, vista gives me the lovely message box of "bash.exe has stopped working" and it goes through trying to figure out what went wrong. You can either "cancel" the progress or wait until it quits trying and "close program".

Is there a workaround for this? Insight into why it is occurring? Perhaps there is a windows way to stop all notification of this type of behavior - or there is a way to get cygwin to quit "gracefully-as-defined-by-MS"?

That's right I just made up a word.

Answer 1

I run Cygwin on Vista without any problem. I didn't do any special configuration. I simply installed it.

Try to set the Cygwin Bash shortcut to execute with admin permissions. (Though, I didn't need to do this)

Also, which version of Vista are you using? I set my copy up on Vista Ultimate; I'm not sure if this would make a difference. Also, which version of Cygwin did you install and where did you install it to? (Which path?)

Update based on answers: I'm not sure but I'd bet you the problem is that it is installed in /Program Files/ folder. Vista probably considers that a protected folder. May I suggest that you install it to either c:\Cygwin\ or, at the least, your Documents (or that area) folder. You should also avoid spaces in your path. I don't know what you are using it for, but some make files will fail if there are spaces (according to what I understand).

I'm by no means an expert.