How do you run a crontab in Cygwin on Windows?

You have two options:

1. Install cron as a windows service, using cygrunsrv:

   cygrunsrv -I cron -p /usr/sbin/cron -a -n
   
   net start cron
   

   Note, in (very) old versions of cron you need to use -D instead of -n

2. The 'non .exe' files are probably bash scripts, so you can run them via the windows scheduler by invoking bash to run the script, e.g.:

   C:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe -l -c "./full-path/to/script.sh"
   

Just wanted to add that the options to cron seem to have changed. Need to pass -n rather than -D.

cygrunsrv -I cron -p /usr/sbin/cron -a -n

I figured out how to get the Cygwin cron service running automatically when I logged on to Windows 7. Here's what worked for me:

Using Notepad, create file C:\cygwin\bin\Cygwin_launch_crontab_service_input.txt with content no on the first line and yes on the second line (without the quotes). These are your two responses to prompts for cron-config.

Create file C:\cygwin\Cygwin_launch_crontab_service.bat with content:

@echo off
C:
chdir C:\cygwin\bin
bash  cron-config < Cygwin_launch_crontab_service_input.txt

Add a Shortcut to the following in the Windows Startup folder: Cygwin_launch_crontab_service.bat

See http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1401-startup-programs-change.html if you need help on how to add to Startup. BTW, you can optionally add these in Startup if you would like:

Cygwin

XWin Server

The first one executes

C:\cygwin\Cygwin.bat

and the second one executes

C:\cygwin\bin\run.exe /usr/bin/bash.exe -l -c /usr/bin/startxwin.exe