GPG random data gathering

[J Vender]

A Few questions about GnuPG on windows...

When, and under what conditions (using a native windows compile of GnuPG built using MSYS/MingW32 in Windows98SE) does GnuPG gather random data for the entropy pool? Does this only happen when the dos console is open and GnuPG is running, or does it happen even if GnuPG isn't running?

Under windows, when generating a key, is it necessary to move the mouse or type on the keyboard for the random device to gather entropy for the key generation, and does the mouse pointer need to be within the dos window for the movement to count for entropy gathering.

Last questions: When building a native windows binary of GnuPG using MSYS/MingW32 on Windows98SE, is there any advantage to using the --enable-m-guard switch in the ./configure step, or is this unnecessary, and if so, why?
Thanks.