Why can't my application locate cygncurses-8.dll? or cygintl-3.dll? or cygreadline6.dll? or ...?
Well, something has gone wrong somehow...
To repair the damage, you must run Cygwin Setup again, and re-install the package which provides the missing DLL package.
If you already installed the package at one point, Cygwin Setup won't show the option to install the package by default. In the ``Select packages to install'' dialog, click on the Full/Part button. This lists all packages, even those that are already installed. Scroll down to locate the missing package, for instance libncurses8. Click on the ``cycle'' glyph until it says ``Reinstall''. Continue with the installation.
For a detailed explanation of the general problem, and how to extend it to other missing DLLs and identify their containing packages, see
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2002-01/msg01619.html.
Why is Cygwin suddenly so slow?
If suddenly every command takes a very long time, then something is probably attempting to access a network share. You may have the obsolete //c notation in your PATH or startup files. Using //c means to contact the network server c, which will slow things down tremendously if it does not exist.
Why can't my services access network shares?
If your service is one of those which switch the user context (sshd, inetd, etc), then it depends on the method used to switch to another user. This problem as well as its solution is described in detail in the Cygwin User's Guide, see http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/ntsec.html.
Workarounds include using public network share that does not require authentication (for non-critical files), providing your password to a net use command, or running the service as your own user with cygrunsrv -u (see /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/cygrunsrv.README for more information).
How should I set my PATH?
This is done for you in the file /etc/profile, which is sourced by bash when you start it from the Desktop or Start Menu shortcut, created by setup.exe. The line is
PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:$PATH"
Effectively, this prepends /usr/local/bin and /usr/bin to your Windows system path. If you choose to reset your PATH, say in $HOME/.bashrc, or by editing etc/profile directly, then you should follow this rule. You must have /usr/bin in your PATH before any Windows system directories. (And you must not omit the Windows system directories!) Otherwise you will likely encounter all sorts of problems running Cygwin applications.
If you're using another shell than bash (say, tcsh), the mechanism is the same, just the names of the login scripts are different.
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