[h-e-w] Unable to launch cygwin bash (M-x shell) in win 7 64 bit

[Sivaram Neelakantan]

I've run into this problem and I don't know where to start.  I got a
new laptop and went about installing all the usual bits of software,
Emacs and Cygwin.  Things mostly work as advertised....however when I
do M-x shell, I get 

let: Symbol's value as variable is void: font-lock-defaults-alist
Error in post-command-hook (global-font-lock-mode-check-buffers): 
(void-variable font-lock-defaults-alist)

and that's it.  I haven't changed anything that I had on my old XP
laptop.  The weird thing is, M-! command to call different cygwin
commands work; the moment I launch the shell within Emacs I get the
above errors.

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and my cygwin configuration in my .Emacs is

(setq exec-path  (cons "C:/gnu/bin/" exec-path))
(setq exec-path (cons "C:/cygwin/usr/bin" (cons "C:/cygwin/bin" exec-path)))
(setq exec-path  (cons "C:/MiKTeX2.9/miktex/bin" exec-path))
(setenv "PATH" (concat 
"C:\\MiKTeX2.9\\miktex\\bin;C:\\cygwin\\bin;C:\\cygwin\\usr\\bin;C:\\gnu\\bin\\;"
 (getenv "PATH")))

;; NT-emacs assumes a Windows command shell, which you change
;; here.
;;
(setq process-coding-system-alist '(("bash" . undecided-unix)))
(setq w32-quote-process-args ?\")
(setq shell-file-name "/usr/bin/bash")
;;(setq shell-file-name "C:/cygwin/usr/bin/bash")
(setenv "SHELL" shell-file-name) 
(setq explicit-shell-file-name shell-file-name)
;; This removes unsightly ^M characters that would otherwise
;; appear in the output.
;;
(add-hook 'comint-output-filter-functions
         'comint-strip-ctrl-m)
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 sivaram
 --