How do you run a crontab in Cygwin on Windows?

You need to also install cygrunsrv so you can set cron up as a windows service, then run cron-config.

If you want the cron jobs to send email of any output you'll also need to install either exim or ssmtp (before running cron-config.)

See /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/cron-*.README for more details.

Regarding programs without a .exe extension, they are probably shell scripts of some type. If you look at the first line of the file you could see what program you need to use to run them (e.g., "#!/bin/sh"), so you could perhaps execute them from the windows scheduler by calling the shell program (e.g., "C:\cygwin\bin\sh.exe -l /my/cygwin/path/to/prog".)

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"
   

The correct syntax to install cron in cygwin as Windows service is to pass -n as argument and not -D:

cygrunsrv --install cron --path /usr/sbin/cron --args -n

-D returns usage error when starting cron in cygwin:

$

$cygrunsrv --install cron --path /usr/sbin/cron --args -D

$cygrunsrv --start cron

cygrunsrv: Error starting a service: QueryServiceStatus: Win32 error 1062:

The service has not been started.

$cat /var/log/cron.log

cron: unknown option -- D

usage: /usr/sbin/cron [-n] [-x [ext,sch,proc,parc,load,misc,test,bit]]

$

Below page has a good explanation.

Installing & Configuring the Cygwin Cron Service in Windows: https://www.davidjnice.com/cygwin_cron_service.html

P.S. I had to run Cygwin64 Terminal on my Windows 10 PC as administrator in order to install cron as Windows service.