Can i use CGRemote (on Windows) and connect it to cgminer 3.7.2 on Linux/BAMT (eg. via API).
Or CGwatcher is required?
Yes. CGWatcher is not required, but if you're connecting to a miner that is running CGWatcher you will have many more features available for that miner.
My cgminer shows over 160,000 shares accepted, but cgwatcher's status tab only shows about 2600. Is this feature fully functional or is something wrong?
Edit: Just uninstalled Kaspersky 2014, CGwatcher still not starting on boot. Fresh cgwatcher install, set to the using registry option on Current User and it's shown in my Win 8.1 task manager startup tab as enabled. Nobody else having this issue at all?
What you're seeing in CGWatcher is the actual share count in terms of shares you submit to the pool. What you're seeing in cgminer is the diff1 equivalent of these shares. To see this in CGWatcher, go to Settings tab, and then the Display sub-tab. Change the share counts from "Actual" to "Diff1" and click Save Settings.
There is a known issue with Windows 8/8.1 not launching CGWatcher even though it is correctly added to the registry or startup folder. The temporary workaround is to create a batch file that launches CGWatcher, and place the batch file in your startup folder. In a future update CGWatcher will do this automatically for Windows 8 computers.