[Haskell-cafe] cabal update doesn't work on Windows XP

[John O'Donnell]

Hi,

Has anyone managed to get cabal to run on Windows?  I'm running Windows 
XP.  There are lots of other things, including old version of Haskell 
tools, installed, but it's too costly to try installing cabal on a fresh 
machine image.

Whenever I do cabal update, the response is "Unsuccessful HTTP code 
403".  That looks like the hackage server isn't responding, but other 
software tools (browsers, etc) on the computer can download the hackage 
database; the only program that can't get it is cabal.

This problem occurs with all cabal 1.6, 1.8, with downloaded 
executables, with versions I've compiled, with the version in the 
Haskell Platform.

Needless to say, these problems don't occur on Linux.

Best wishes,
John