Vimdiff failing with “Cannot read or write temp files”

Question

I\'m using Vim 7.4 on Windows 7.

I do have a custom _vimrc file, but both Vim and gVim work fine. When I try to run vimdiff .\\xxxxx .\\yyyyy, it gives the

Answer 1

I was getting this exact error and had uselessly fiddled around with the permissions on set backupdir.

But then I remembered that I have recently changed to Windows 7 and to using Cygwin 64 and had forgotten to repoint the following setting.

set shell=c:\\cygwin64\\bin\\zsh.exe shellcmdflag=-c shellxquote=\"

And hey presto the error went away and the following now works:

gvim -d v1.php v2.php

So what this error is really saying is I can't find your shell or cmd!