Cygwin setup.exe hangs during install Windows 8? How should I continue?

Question

So I have used Cygwin on and off for the past few years and I've installed it a handful of times. However, I've never experienced the install hanging during the install process. When this happens, the install literally freezes and doesn't budge a "bit." I've read that this is a somewhat common problem but like I said, I've never come across it before.

Here's a play-by-play of what I'm doing and where it hangs on me.

1. Download the Setup-x86.exe from http://cygwin.com/install.html
2. Install from Internet
3. Use "C:\cygwin" as the default root directory for all users.
4. Use "C:\Users\Austin\Downloads" as the default local package directory
5. Direct Installation
6. Use http://mirrors.kernel.org per this question.
7. I don't specify any additional items for the install (I thought it would best to keep it as simple as possible after running into this problem multiple times.)
8. I don't change any of the "Resolving Dependencies" (whatever those are)
9. ...and everything goes great until a certain package get's tripped up and causes the install to hang. This is almost always a different package at a different point in the install. In this instance, it was texinfo-5.2-1.tar.xz and the install was at 94%! So close!!!

So what I'm looking for is how do I help the installer continue from this point? What do I need to do to go in cygwin and give it the extra motivation it needs to finish the job.

---

Work around to the problem above:

So after fiddling with the install a little more, I discovered that if you close the frozen install, and re-execute the setup file, it forces the install past the point where it got snagged the previous time. For example, after canceling the snagged install at 94% (mentioned above), I ran the setup file again and got to 95% before the install snagged again. I repeated this setup about 5 times before successfully installing cygwin.

Like I said, this is just a work around and may be the best/only solution.

Answer 1

I had the exact same problem on my Win7 64 bits with the 64 bits installer. I successfully solved the problem by deleting the content of

c:\[cygwin_install_dir]\var\log

Which contained two files:

• setup.log
• setup.log.full

Restarted the installer and everything went well!

Hope this will help.