I have a very nasty problem with Winboard under Windows XP, SP2:
Once every 5 games or so, Winboard cannot hear one of the engines. As a consequence it starts just counting down the clock with zero or one moves played on the display (depending if this engine has white or black).
This totally wrecks my ability to test my engine: if I set up a match of 50 or 100 games to run overnight, the next morning only 3 games have been played, and in the 4th one side is at -7:30:00 and counting.
This failure to set up communication happens also frequently when I start Winboard by hand. From the task manager I can then see that the engine(s) do start up, use CPU heavily as the think up a move, and then become idle as they have send their move to Winboard. Winboard, however, just counts them down forever.
This is not a problem of my own engine; it also happens when I play, say, GNUChess against TSCP.
Have any of you seen similar behavior, and what could be done against it? It would already be a big nuisance if 20% of the games are randomly awarded to one of the opponents without play, after waiting out the flag, but I could correct that from the PGN fil, I suppose. But now 95% of the games is not played, as Winboard just waits forever...