cygwin - irssi not connecting and screen capturing c-a

Question

I've got two questions regarding cygwin usage.

1. I'm trying to run Irssi using Cygwin but it won't connect to any server i give it even if I can connect from other, non-cygwin clients like mIRC and freenode's webchat. The connection always times out and its the same way with other programs (like naim) as well. I can't help but feel that I've missed something, but I don't know what. Do I need to do anything special with Cygwin before I can connect?
2. I use screen to manage multiple windows, but when I'm using screen with Emacs I can't move to the beginning of a line with C-a because that's captured by screen (c-a 0-9 to move to another window, etc). Is there any way to rebind it?

Answer 1

1. Are you running Windows' (or another) firewall on your system? Have you created exceptions for Irssi in the firewall control panel?

2. You can always send Emacs a literal C-a by typing Ctrl-A then A. Screen gets the ^A and the following "a" tells screen to send ^A to the terminal.
   
   Additionally, there are two ways to change Screen's command character (aka escape character).

   • One-time use: commandline option
     To change the command character for one Screen session, use the -e xy option when starting your screen session. The default is -e^Aa, where x is the command character (^A) and y is the character generating a literal command character (a). If you want your new command character to be ^B, for example, use -e^Bb in your commandline.

   • Personalized default: ~/.screenrc
     To change the command character default, specify it in your ~/.screenrc file. Just add this line to your ~/.screenrc, and your next new session will use the new default command character:

     escape ^Bb
     

     This follows the same xy syntax as the commandline option. You can also use the keyword "defescape" instead of "escape"; they are synonymous.