Struggle with simple first time install on 2008 R2

[Jon Turney]

On 21/10/2025 10:20, Hans-Peter Jansen via Cygwin wrote:
> Am Dienstag, 21. Oktober 2025, 01:07:28 Mitteleuropäische Sommerzeit schrieb
> matthew patton:
>> I think the original pebcak was trying to do anything useful with Win2008
>> aside from throw it into the landfill.
> 
> Matthew, yes, of course. This inquiry is part of the final steps to retire the
> system.
> 
>> The M$ docs show that robocopy and
>> xcopy exist in 2008 R2 so why aren't you using the native tools?
> 
> Yes, but the task for rsync is to transfer multiple VMS with 800 GB in total
> multiple times. Thus, it requires to transfer the binary delta at different
> stages (in between the VMs are being worked on). This won't work with M$ tools
> to my knowledge.
> 
> I wonder, the nobody ever stumbled upon this:
> 
> nothing provides _windows >= 6.3 needed by cygwin-3.6.1-1
> Solution 1/1 (default)
>    - do not ask to install cygwin-3.6.1-1
> 

_windows is not a real package.

It's synthesized by setup, and it's version is equal to the underlying 
Windows version (NT 6.3 == Windows 8.1/Server 2012 R2).

So this constraint exists to prevent you from installing the current 
cygwin DLL onto a Windows version where it will not work (due to relying 
on unavailable Windows APIs e.g. the "The procedure entry point 
GetSystemTimePreciseAsFileTime was not found in the DLL KERNEL32.dll" 
error you quote).

If you bypass that safety check, congratulations, you get to shoot 
yourself in the foot...