1.7.15-1: mintty bash failing to run .NET executables ?

[John Costella <john dot costella at gmail dot com>]

Not a newbie exactly, but haven't posted a question to this list before.

I've been running Cygwin on both Windows 7 Pro 64-bit SP1 for about eight
months and a (virtualised) server running Win Server 2008 R2 Standard SP1
for about two months, mainly as a "convenience shell" as corporate policy
prevents me running native Linux machines. I'm using MonoDevelop to compile
command-line C# programs into .NET executables (generally 4.0 by default,
but have also tested the following with a "Hello, World!" compiled to 2.0).
I believe MonoDevelop on Windows uses the standard Windows SDK and compiler.

Today I happened to reboot the server for another reason, and then found
that the standard output of the .NET executables was not appearing in the
mintty bash terminal (although standard error was, and the programs were
executing: visibly doing things in Task Manager, files being created,
etc.).

During investigation I wanted to get a utility from the Cygwin site, but hit
Enter at the wrong time and ended up refreshing the installation to the
latest (1.7.15-1).

After that, .NET programs failed to launch at all. The mintty bash terminal
just sits there, no CPU or anything else being used, the .NET .exe failing
to launch according to Task Manager. (Have left it 10 or 15 minutes to make
sure.) Ctrl-C / Ctrl-Break, Ctrl-Z fail to have any effect. Clicking the
close 'X' on the window housing the mintty terminal just kills it
(mintty.exe and bash.exe) immediately?(as seen in Task Manager)?without
comment or question from Windows.

I've tried reinstalling Cygwin on the server, then deleting c:\cygwin and
reinstalling from scratch (rebooting each time in between for good measure),
and have been unable to get .NET executables to run.

Unfortunately, during my investigations, I also updated my laptop Cygwin to
1.7.15-1 as well (although I didn't uninstall or delete it). I've just
discovered that it, too, is hanging if I try to launch any .NET exe.

Running a "normal" .exe (e.g. things like explorer.exe from the Windows
directory, or just typing 'explorer') works fine, and launches the
applicable Windows program. I'm guessing that normal executables (e.g.
created directly by gcc) are fine, and it's only those pulling in the .NET
CLR that are failing.

Both machines have all available Windows updates on them.

I've never hit this sort of problem before with Cygwin, and am absolutely
perplexed as to what is causing it. The fact that it's happened on two
different machines (with different Windows versions), one with only a Cygwin
update from setup.exe and the other with a "scorched earth" clean install,
makes me tend to think that I might not be doing something absolutely stupid
(which was my default assumption).

Fortunately I can run the .NET executables directly from a Windows command
prompt (cmd.exe) on either machine, but the loss of the Cygwin "convenience
shell" (and the many shell scripts I use in it) is somewhat painful.

I'm attaching the output from cygcheck for both machines, but have had to
sanitise a fair bit of corporate information (usernames, servers, domains,
etc.) and have replaced in each case with the string "!sanitised!".

Also, if it's at all possible to "rollback" to previous version of Cygwin,
that would be a great help. (I see 1.5 on the site but that might be a bit
too far back unless I get desperate.)

Thanks in advance.

Attachment: cygcheck-laptop.out
Description: Binary data

Attachment: cygcheck-server.out
Description: Binary data

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