revert - Can't seem to discard changes in Git

Question

After seeing the following from the command line:

# On branch RB_3.0.10
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#       modified:   index.htm

I am trying to discard my changes by typing the command:

git checkout -- index.htm

but when I re-run git status, it looks exactly the same. The checkout doesn't seem to be working. Am I doing something wrong? I am using GIT 1.6.1.2 on windows/cygwin.

# On branch RB_3.0.10
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#       modified:   index.htm

Answer 1

This has been bothering me for a while, almost every repo I'd check out had changes that I couldn't discard. Long story short, I tried all of the above, nothing worked. This is what I did to get things back to normal (on a Mac):

Completely remove the autocrlf & safecrlf settings from ~/.gitconfig
Completely remove the autocrlf & safecrlf settings from your repo's local config ./.git/config
git rm --cached -r .
git reset --hard