Intermittent Enigmime errors on startup, with cygwin gpg & somewhat aged laptop

[yary]

I'm on Windows XP using a single-core 1.86GHz laptop, 2GB of memory.
Thunderbird 17.0.6 reports:

Running Enigmail version 1.5.1 (20130205-0013)

• *

Using gpg executable C:\cygwin\bin\gpg.exe to encrypt and decrypt

Sometimes I start up Thunderbird and Enigmail just works. Other times it
tells me it can't start the Enigmime service, and when I go to OpenPGP >
Preferences, under "Files & Directories", it tells me GnuPG not found, even
though "Override with..." is checked and shows C:\cygwin\bin\gpg.exe

I can fix it via "View Console", running a test message under the advanced
Preferences "Debugging" tab. Then I go through a few times unchecking
"Override with..." and clicking "OK", and re-opening Preferences and
checking "Override with..." again and browsing to C:\cygwin\bin\gpg.exe,
then click "OK". I repeat until the console view shows me "gpg (GnuPG)
1.4.13" etc. Before then, the console shows me the command line that it
uses to start gpg, but it gives me an error immediately. I suspect that
there is a timeout where it waits for a response, which is tuned too low
for this laptop, but really can't be sure.

Once Enigmail "finds" gpg, it works flawlessly as long as Thunderbird runs.
Once I close it or reboot, I usually (but not always) have to go through
that process again the next time.

I'm enclosing the console log from my most recent run.

-y

[yary]

Here is my log. The mailing list might have stripped off the attachment, it
was in my "Sent" copy.

Initializing Enigmail service ...
EnigmailAgentPath=C:\cygwin\bin\gpg.exe

enigmail> C:\cygwin\bin\gpg.exe --version --version --batch --no-tty
--charset utf-8 --display-charset utf-8

EnigTest: START ********
EnigTest: To: yary
TEST MESSAGE 123
TEST MESSAGE 345

Initializing Enigmail service ...
EnigmailAgentPath=C:\cygwin\bin\gpg.exe

enigmail> C:\cygwin\bin\gpg.exe --version --version --batch --no-tty
--charset utf-8 --display-charset utf-8
Initializing Enigmail service ...
EnigmailAgentPath=C:\cygwin\bin\gpg.exe

enigmail> C:\cygwin\bin\gpg.exe --version --version --batch --no-tty
--charset utf-8 --display-charset utf-8
Initializing Enigmail service ...
EnigmailAgentPath=C:\cygwin\bin\gpg.exe

enigmail> C:\cygwin\bin\gpg.exe --version --version --batch --no-tty
--charset utf-8 --display-charset utf-8
gpg (GnuPG) 1.4.13
Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Home: ~/.gnupg
Supported algorithms:
Pubkey: RSA, RSA-E, RSA-S, ELG-E, DSA
Cipher: IDEA, 3DES, CAST5, BLOWFISH, AES, AES192, AES256, TWOFISH,
CAMELLIA128, CAMELLIA192, CAMELLIA256
Hash: MD5, SHA1, RIPEMD160, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512, SHA224
Compression: Uncompressed, ZIP, ZLIB, BZIP2

[Ludwig Hügelschäfer]

Hi, thanks. This is the console log. I can see that gpg issues its output only after the 3rd start, which is strange. To further debug it, please provide a debug log (not a console log). Instructions can be found here: http://www.enigmail.net/support/bugs.php, lower half. If you're concerned about privacy you can either scramble the incriminating parts before posting it here, or send it directly to me or Patrick.

[Ludwig Hügelschäfer]

I couldn't find the debug log, please attach it. Please be aware that using a cygwin gpg-executable is a quite unusual setup which may make it difficult to reproduce the behaviour you're experiencing.