No more Cygwin-X start menu entries

Mon Jan 13 18:06:59 GMT 2025

On 13/01/2025 17:42, Andrea Venturoli via Cygwin wrote:
> Hello.
>> Today I run setup to upgrade all packages: an error popped up saying 
> xinit post-install script was not able to complete.
> I'm in fact missing Cygwin-X entries in start menu.
> I tried running it again, but I always get the same error.
>> Extract from setup.log.full:
>[...]
>> 2025年01月13日 18:30:58 running: C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe --norc --noprofile 
>> "/etc/postinstall/xinit.sh"
>> mkshortcut: Saving "/cygdrive/c/ProgramData/Microsoft/Windows/Start 
>> Menu/Programs/Cygwin-X/XWin Server.lnk" failed; does the target 
>> directory exist?
>> mkshortcut: Saving "/cygdrive/c/ProgramData/Microsoft/Windows/Start 
>> Menu/Programs/Cygwin-X/User .xsession script.lnk" failed; does the 
>> target directory exist?
>> 2025年01月13日 18:30:59 abnormal exit: exit code=3
[...]
>> Any idea on how to fix this?

Thanks for reporting this.
This seems to be something that's changed in Windows 11(?) that prevents 
mkshortcut from working to create these start menu shortcuts.
We've never really got to the bottom of what causes that, why it only 
effects some people and what we need to do to fix it. (See the 
discussion around [1]).
As a workaround you might see if the script can be run in an elevated 
shell (right-click on the "Cygwin64 Terminal" icon, choose "Run As 
Administrator", run the /etc/postinstall/xinit.sh script)
[1] https://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin/2024-November/256775.html