If you try to specify an absolute path like...
location / {
alias C:\Users\SomeUser\mysite\static;
}
...then upon requesting a file from that location, you'll probably see errors in C:\nginx\logs\error.log like:
2011/11/11 12:53:16 [error] 6236#0: *1 open() "/cygdrive/c/nginx/C:\Users\SomeUser\mysite\static\somefile.css
When configuring nginx on Windows, specify any paths relative to the C:\nginx directory. This works:
location / {
alias ../Users/SomeUser/mysite/static;
}
Personally, I was happy to learn this because it makes my nginx configurations a little more portable between Windows and Linux than I had expected them to be. To turn a Linux configuration file into one that works on Windows, for me it's basically just:
s|/home/myname/|../Users/Myname|