Startx fails on Cygwin

Cygwin is commonly used as a tool for running X server on Windows when graphical applications running on UNIX/Linux need to be accessed from Windows. This is a common need when Documentum products need to be installed on UNIX/Linux remotely from a Windows workstation.

Sometimes, one runs into a problem when startx fails on Cygwin. This may happen intermittently or consistently. Look at the messages carefully. When the message showed error number 487 and fork() failed, the following steps have helped to resolve the issue for me:

1. Close all Cygwin programs.
2. Run bin/ash.exe under Cygwin installation. On the shell prompt run the following commands
   1. /bin/rebaseall
   2. exit
3. Start Cygwin/bash
4. startx

I found this tip here.