setting hbase.zookeeper.quorum to 127.0.0.1 worked well for me under cygwin
<configuration>
<property>
<name>hbase.rootdir</name>
<value>hdfs://localhost:9000/hbase</value>
<description>The directory shared by region servers.
</description>
</property>
<property>
<name>hbase.zookeeper.quorum</name>
<value>127.0.0.1</value>
<description>Comma separated list of servers in the ZooKeeper Quorum.
For example, "host1.mydomain.com,host2.mydomain.com,host3.mydomain.com".
By default this is set to localhost for local and pseudo-distributed modes
of operation. For a fully-distributed setup, this should be set to a full
list of ZooKeeper quorum servers. If HBASE_MANAGES_ZK is set in
hbase-env.sh
this is the list of servers which we will start/stop ZooKeeper on.
</description>
</property>
</configuration>
