I was able to use Windows Explorer to open the file by double clicking the file. I was able to use cygstart open the file with full path. The problem is with all file type. I can do a cygstart http://www.cygwin.com/ with no problem. The result from:
strace cygstart hello.txt |grep hello.txt
is as below:
20 11399 [main] cygstart 732 build_argv: argv[1] = 'hello.txt'
202 12600 [main] cygstart 732 normalize_posix_path: src hello.txt
46 12686 [main] cygstart 732 normalize_posix_path: /cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/hello.txt = normalize_posix_path (hello.txt)
22 12708 [main] cygstart 732 mount_info::conv_to_win32_path: conv_to_win32_path (/cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/hello.txt)
135 12843 [main] cygstart 732 mount_info::cygdrive_win32_path: src '/cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/hello.txt', dst 'c:\WINDOWS\system32\hello.txt'
21 12960 [main] cygstart 732 mount_info::conv_to_win32_path: src_path /cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/hello.txt, dst c:\WINDOWS\system32\hello.txt, flags 0x2A, rc 0
73 13033 [main] cygstart 732 symlink_info::check: GetFileAttributes (c:\WINDOWS\system32\hello.txt) failed
47 13103 [main] cygstart 732 symlink_info::check: GetFileAttributes (c:\WINDOWS\system32\hello.txt.lnk) failed
169 13294 [main] cygstart 732 symlink_info::check: 0 = symlink.check (c:\WINDOWS\system32\hello.txt, 0x22C040) (0x80002A)
26 13619 [main] cygstart 732 path_conv::check: this->path(c:\WINDOWS\system32\hello.txt), has_acls(1)
Unable to start 'hello.txt': The specified file was not found.
It seems it is looking at the wrong directory.