title: Connecting git to github on windows 7 without bash
body: <p>I'm setting up git on my new Windows 7 machine and I'm hitting a roadblock when it comes to getting github to acknowledge my ssh key. I am doing things a little different from the standard script in that I would rather not use cygwin and prefer to use my powershell prompt.  The following is what I did:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>I installed msysgit (portable).</li>
  <li>I went to C:\program files\git\bin and used ssh-keygen to generate a public/private ssh keypair which I put in c:\Temp</li>
  <li>I then created a directory named .ssh\ in c:\Users\myusername\ (on windows 7)</li>
  <li>I moved both the files generated by the ssh-keygen (id_rsa and id_rsa.pub) into the .ssh directory</li>
  <li>I went to my account on github, created a new public key, copy-pasted the contents of id_rsa.pub into it and saved</li>
  <li>I now go to my powershell prompt, set-alias git 'C:\program files\git\bin\git.exe'</li>
  <li><p>I try to now do a clone git@github.com:togakangaroo/ps-profile.git which rejects my authentication:</p>
  
  <p>Permission denied (publickey). 
  fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Past experience says that this means git is not recognizing my key.  What steps am I missing?</p>
  
  <p>I have a feeling that I need to somehow configure git so that it knows where my ssh keys are (though it would seem it should look there automatically) but I don't know how to do that.</p>
  
  <p>Another possible clue is that when I try to run git config --global user.name "George Mauer"
  I get an error</p>
  
  <pre><code>fatal: $HOME not set
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I did however set up a HOME environment user variable with the value %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%</p>