I am deploying from a Windows XP SP2 workstation using Capistrano 2 following [url http://www.hostingrails.com/forums/wiki_thread/46]these[/url] instructions.
After deploying my app I would get the dreaded "Application failed to start". The reason was that the files public/dispatch.* and script/process/* in my rails app were not set to executable.
To fix this on Windows XP you can use the svn executable property:
C:\your_rails_app> svn ps svn:executable ./public/dispatch.*
C:\your_rails_app> svn ps svn:executable ./script/process/reaper
C:\your_rails_app> svn ps svn:executable ./script/process/spawner
C:\your_rails_app> svn ps svn:executable ./script/process/inspector
Then just check in your changes and deploy.Hope this helps.