I always used to have the line: xterm*ColorMode:True in my ~/.Xdefaults and it worked. With the last few versions of cygwin/xfree it started complaining $ xterm Warning: Cannot convert string "true" to type Int
Although the xterm actually seemed to work ok, even doing the ColorMode stuff right. So I changed the relevant line to an integer like it seemed to be asking xterm*ColorMode: 1 and it stopped complaining. Dunno what that's all about. Probably not a cygwin-specific thing, but I mention it here in case it is. Lev