I have been trying to install cygwin with minimal KDE support to run kdenlive as described here:

http://sudofixit.blogspot.com/2013/06/g ... perly.html

I cannot find kdebase-startkde using the cygwin installer but a web search shows many matches for v4.10.5-1 on ftp mirrors for kde.

Using Windows I have been able to download some of these which are only 14 bytes long, the first of which are "BZ" so they appear to be correct. WinRAR and 7Zip will not expand these files, maybe they are too small.

Without kdebase-startkde, this will not function: echo exec startkde>~/.xinitrc

I tried echo exec plasma-desktop>~/.xinitrc which failed.

Would someone please help me determine which components should be downloaded with cygwin and how to launch the plasma desktop without XWin crashing?

I'm afraid those packages aren't provided by the KDE on Windows team in any form, so I wouldn't know why the package is unavailable in Cygwin. I suggest you ask the Cygwin folks on their forum as they're more likely to know what happened to it.

Don't launch plasma on windows. While it theoretically works, it's not worth it -- you can't even use the panel to switch windows.