summary: I'm running an up-to-date cygwin X on wxpsp3. I get both xterm and urxvt-X to start, but cannot get either to pickup settings from .Xdefaults or .Xresources. What am I doing wrong? details: I'm a former longtime cygwin user, since my former workplaces required windows. For the past few years, I've been able to run linux as my primary work desktop, so have been doing that. Now I'm starting at another place that requires windows (they literally will not allow my linux laptop on the network), so I'm desperately trying to revive my cygwin configuration chops. I used latest setup.exe to install latest packages onto a fresh install of ... windows xp sp3. (A blast from the past :-) Packages included X, xinit, xterm, rxvt-unicode, and emacs-X11. I then edited startxwin.bat to get a multiwindow X to start xterm and urxvt, and .Xresources to start them with desired options. The terminals are indeed starting, but not as desired, and they just don't seem to respond to changes to .Xresources, even if I * `xrdb ~/.Xresources` * shutdown/restart X (rclick on tray icon>Exit>Exit, then run startxwin.bat) * shutdown/restart windows, then shutdown/restart X (I also tried briefly to make the terminals load changes from ~/.Xdefaults, but I believe that is deprecated, so I didn't try too hard.) Some things that *are* happening in accord with my .Xresources (attached) include: + red keyboard cursor in xterm (BTW: how to set _mouse_ cursor color?) + scrollbar to right in xterm + S-PgUp, S-PgDn scrolls xterm + xterm foreground=black, background=white + xterm font-size ~= 8 (looks right, anyway) + urxvt font == "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" (which is in my fc-list) Some things that *aren't* happening, that I believe my .Xresources should invoke, include - xterm font != "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" - urxvt font size != 8 (it's huge, like 14 or 16) - urxvt foreground != black && background != white (more like cream on dark blue) - no tabs in urxvt (which I dearly want, but I really should learn to use `screen` anyway) So now I'm trying to make this happen on my old wxp laptop, but am getting identical results. What am I doing wrong? Or are only commandline options supported? Please find attached startxwin.bat (attached as startxwin.txt) ~/.xinitrc (untouched by me) ~/.Xresources XWin.0.log cygcheck.out If there's anything else I should do to further debug (or to actually fix :-) this, please let me know. If I should be RTFMing, please pass pointer(s). TIA, Tom Roche