At the moment I'm working on a project where I need to use Windows, but don't have access to the Windows subsystem for Linux. In order to get access to Linux command line tools, I've installed Cygwin. For some reason Cygwin frequently breaks after a system reboot. Clicking on the Cygwin terminal launcher from the start menu, or from within Windows Explorer, briefly flickers as the Cygwin terminal starts and then immediately closes. There are lots of posts about similar issues on online forums, which generally involve some complex reinstallation of Cygwin, or updating the launch shortcuts. None of them worked for me, except for the following:
- Launch a Windows command prompt
- Stop the Cygwin service with
net stop cygserver - Restart the Cygwin service with
net start cygserver
After that the Cygwin terminal starts as normal.