Just to mention first that you could bypass cron altogether with this little trick:
Create a scheduled task with the windows scheduler by calling the shell program
C:\\cygwin\\bin\\bash.exe -l -c /cygwin/path/to/shell
otherwise…
cygrunsrv --install cron --path /usr/sbin/cron --args -n
net start cron
or from a Cygwin prompt with:
cygrunsrv --start cron
Now change the properties on the service to run as a user other than “Local System”
Run this from a Cygwin terminal
cron-config
Show system log of possible problems from the cron daemon (service)
/usr/bin/cronevents
Check installed modules
cygcheck.exe -c
Check current status
cygrunsrv -Q cron
If you get
(CRON) error (can't switch user context)
this means that the cron service is trying to run jobs as the “Local System” account. Right-click on the service and change the user it runs jobs as to be the one you want.