GNU Emacs windows dired mode on binaries from cygwin

[Balaji Venkataraman <bvenkata+nospam@sm.intel.com>]

Hi,

I'm not sure whether this is the right place for this question. I have
cygwin (which has it's own different installation of Emacs 21.2.x). I also
have Emacs 21.3 (the standalone M$ Windows version) installed *separately*.

These are with the Windows version of Emacs only:

1. When I use dired mode to list /cygwin/usr/{bin|lib} (I've made sure this
   dir exists etc.) - this is on Win2K - emacs does not display *any*
   files. The dired buffer just has ./ and ../ listed. Is this expected
   behavior.

2. Another related question. Can the Windows only version of emacs, execute
   cygwin binaries. I'm guessing it cannot, but I'd like to know if it can
   be made to. In other words when I invoke "M-x shell" I want it to run
   /usr/bin/bash.exe instead of cmd.exe

Please note that the cygwin version of emacs (started within cygwin's X
env.) works perfectly.

3. Yet another question - this sounds far-fetched - is there some package,
   which can open a windows shortcut (to say a text file), correctly.
   e.g. - c:/my_file.txt and I create windoze shortcut in
   c:/tmp/my_file.lnk.  Now within emacs I say "C-x C-f RET
   c:/tmp/my_file.lnk" and it should open c:/my_file.txt. 
   I'm probably asking for too much ;-)

Any help appreciated,
-B.
-- 
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