cygwin/emacs (v24.4.1) behind firewall proxy package install 0 sized files

I'm a recent Vim "convert" (and yet love most of it), still I have an issue with installing packages using cygwin/emacs.

The related configurations are (I have $http(s)_proxy set up as environment variables in my .bashrc):

;;; init.el ;; This sets up the load path so that we can override it (package-initialize nil) (package-initialize t) (setq package-enable-at-startup nil) (org-babel-load-file "~/Repos/orgfiles/emacs-setup.org") 

From emacs-setup.org:

(require 'package) (setq package-list '( ;;; list of packages )) (add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "http://melpa.milkbox.net/packages/") t) (add-to-list 'package-archives '("org" . "http://orgmode.org/elpa/") t) (add-to-list 'package-archives '("marmalade" . "http://marmalade-repo.org/packages/") t) (package-initialize) ; fetch the list of packages available (unless package-archive-contents (package-refresh-contents)) ; install the missing packages (dolist (package package-list) (unless (package-installed-p package) (package-install package))) 

(This was copy pasted from several places from the interwebs...)

My problems are the following:

• I quiet often (but not always) get the following errors in *Messages*:

   Contacting host: elpa.gnu.org:80 Failed to download `gnu' archive. Contacting host: melpa.milkbox.net:80 Failed to download `melpa' archive. Contacting host: orgmode.org:80 Failed to download `org' archive. Contacting host: marmalade-repo.org:80 Failed to download `marmalade' archive. 

• when I'm able to download the (e.g.) melpa archive and mark a package for installation, quiet often the installed package contains 0 sized package file(s) after which seemed to be a succesful installation. E.g.: most recently:

   $ ls -l auto-complete-chunk-20140225.146/ total 2.0K -rw-r--r-- 1 zsbotykai None 0 Feb 16 10:54 auto-complete-chunk.el -rw-r--r-- 1 zsbotykai None 410 Feb 16 10:54 auto-complete-chunk-autoloads.el -rw-r--r-- 1 zsbotykai None 172 Feb 16 10:54 auto-complete-chunk-pkg.el 

  So above: auto-complete-chunk.el is empty after the *Messages* install log shows:

   Install package `auto-complete-chunk-20140225.146'? y Contacting host: melpa.milkbox.net:80 Generating autoloads for auto-complete-chunk.el...done Saving file /home/zsbotykai/.emacs.d/elpa/auto-complete-chunk-20140225.146/auto-complete-chunk-autoloads.el... Wrote /home/zsbotykai/.emacs.d/elpa/auto-complete-chunk-20140225.146/auto-complete-chunk-autoloads.el 

Could you please point me out and/or show the direction where/what/how should I investigate the root cause of this?