Winboard Forum

So, there is a remote chance this may not be a WinBoard issue, but I'm trying to figure out whether it is or not.

I have had no problem running Stockfish 14.1 on WinBoard on a Windows 7 2+GHz Core 2 Duo system from some time ago, until now. Now it has started crashing during tournaments, but only after successfully playing one or two games. It takes down WinBoard when it goes, so it's not a normal engine crash. And I have tried to duplicate the problem in Cute Chess, and the same engine runs just fine with the same settings in Cute Chess without an issue, game after game in a row.

What can cause this? This is the machine I can turn to to run Stockfish 14.1 on unusual non-standard positions without it crashing because of trying to use NNUE, because on this system, without a sufficient GPU, it doesn't try to use it. But even on this system, I now have to fall back to an earlier version of Stockfish to proceed with any tournaments whatsoever.

Any ideas how to continue diagnosing?

What exactly do you mean with 'it takes down WinBoard when it goes'? Does it hang? Do you get a Windows popup saying "winboard.exe is not functioning properly"? Does WinBoard throw up a fatal-error popup with the complaint that the engine died? Which WinBoard version are you running anyway? And are you using Polyglot or UCI2WB as the UCI adapter?

To get more info you can run WinBoard with the additional option -debug. It then creates a file winboard.debug in its folder that contains all engine-GUI communication. If you use Polyglot, you can also turn its logging on (through the Engine Settings dialog). It then creates a file polyglot.log that indicates what went on between Polyglot and the engine.