For anyone interested, and my own documentation.

  1. Install Git for Windows a.k.a. msysgit.
  2. Install TortoiseGit for Explorer integration (optional).
  3. Grab the latest Cloud9 Git repo code.
  4. From the root where you downloaded Cloud9, from a command-prompt, run the following commands
    1. git pull git://github.com/ajaxorg/cloud9.git master
    2. git submodule init
    3. git submodule update –init –recursive
  5. Modify the “{root}\bin\cloud9-win32.bat” file and add the following parameter after “bin/cloud9.js “
    1. “-w {relative path to your workspace}”. e.g. “-w ..\..\GitProjects\MyProject”. 
    2. It would only work for me with a relative path.  Using an absolute path – e.g. C:\GitProjects\MyProject – would not work.
  6. At command-prompt in root folder, run “bin\cloud9-win32.bat”
  7. If Firefox is not your primary browser, open up URL http://127.0.0.1:3000/ in Firefox
  8. Have fun coding.

I could only get the IDE running in Firefox, but I’ve only been playing with this code for about 45 minutes, so your results may vary.