Windows 8 group won't respect /etc/passwd or /etc/group

[John Smith]

Hi there,
I've been struggling with an issue trying to figure out why Windows 8.1 
won't seem to respect the trick of setting your /etc/password to use a 
default group such as users instead of 'none'.  There are a few other 
discussions on this board around changing the group to "Users" and 
modifying the /etc/passwd to have a default group.

The issue I am stumped over is that if I create a file using windows 
explorer (or anything else outside of cygwin), when I go to ls the file 
in cygwin, the group is coming back as none.  Well, technically it's 
coming back as 4294967295.  (64 bit cygwin)

Even stranger, I can change the file manually with a chgrp Users and it 
looks and acts fine, but if I go to edit the file with notepad or any 
other external application, the group gets reset back to 4294967295.

I am trying to isolate it, thinking maybe it's something to do with the 
permissions of the parent folders, but I'm seeing this behavior all over 
the machine -- in My Documents, in Windows, in a blank test folder. 
I've tried removing some groups even, thinking maybe there was some 
weird inheritance going on, but haven't had much luck.

Does anyone have any ideas?  This is driving me batty.  I even tried 
going back to cygwin 32, but it exhibits the same issue -- just using 
the "None" group instead of "???????????" group.

Thanks.

-John

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