Installing Cygwin on Windows 8.1

Question

I want to install Cygwin on Windows 8.1 64bit but got no success using any variant. I tried:

1) I downloaded fresh setup-x86_x64 from cygwin site and then tried to install from Internet but got empty mirror list.

2) The I tried manually add mirror from https://cygwin.com/mirrors.lst (this file accessible from my computer) but got "unable to get setup.ini" error.

3) then I tried to download WHOLE package manually from one of the mirrors (all mirrors normally accessible from my computer via FTP or HTTP) to setup from local package. When I downloaded all packages (about 30 Gigs) I ran setup with local package option. Package folder was scanned and I got list of categories. But there was no package in any category.

4) also I tried to run setup on my Windows 7 notebook. It got mirror list normally. Also I downloaded packages by setup program using my notebook, then transfered them to my Win 8.1 desktop, but the story was the same: I saw list of categories without packages. But on Win7 notebook I saw packages in categoies when I tried to install from the same directory.

5) Also I tried to turn off or even uninstall my firewall and antivirus software, but all results was the same.

6) I tried to run setup with administrator rights, tried to use different folders and HDD paths, tried to use x86 setup instead of x64 setup.

But nothing helped me.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Define "didn't work". Post whatever error message the installer presents to you. Every little bit of information helps.

A common issue people experience while installing cygwin are outdated mirrors, ie, websites who'd usually mirror the cygwin stack, but failed to keep it updated, which explains your issue regarding a missing/bad setup.ini file.

In any case, you most definitely would never want to actually download the entire cygwin stack, as it also includes past-, current-, and beta-versions.
As far as I know, "local installation" is a remnant of the days where one could acquire CDs containing the cygwin stack, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.