So this workerThread passes the socket off to another function that handles the command connection and then deletes/frees the data used. All that aside, here's the issue. This while-loop generates hundreds of thousands of handles in a matter of days. This causes all kinds of problems on the server (there's a similar issue with clients using identical functions) and either the server needs to be rebooted or the program shut down. I tried to use WaitForSingleObject() and then CloseHandle() but it seems to close the handle prematurely. This causes the client/server to not communicate and interrupt any data transfer. I am wondering if using boost::thread will make handling the destruction of the threads easier. I've been researching it but I can't find any solid information on whether or not CloseHandle(), or something similar, needs to be run. I'm just trying to see if using Boost is the right direction to go.