NT reliability issues

[Harry]

Running NT 6.5.1000.7, TWS 887.2, .NET 2 Service Pack 1, Java 1.6.0_07

(1) NT sometimes does not start but freezes when showing NT Logo and control center - other elements of workspace, i.e. charts and DOM do not show up. NT then has to be removed from the Windows task manager. The second trial to start NT usually works.

(2) Sometimes NT does not connect to Interactive Brokers (Connection would not turn green). Shutting NT down without saving workspace and restarting it solves the problem.

(3) When loading backfill NT sometimes halts when saving the data. The "Saving...." popup remains on top indefinitely. No more data loading is possible after this incident. Shutting down NT without saving workspace and restarting it again solves the problem. This issue is not related to slow backfill of IB.

(4) I have three connected charts in my default workspace. When I change instruments, sometimes only one of the three charts shows up while the other two charts will produce empty frames. The empty charts can not be repaired as they do no more respond to clicks with the right mouse button. Only way to get back the charts is to shut down NT without saving the workspace and restart it again.

(5) When I modified the target of a bracket order on the chart trader today, the target did not move but simply changed colours from green to orange, never went green again. The new target was not moved on the charts and not accepted by TWS. After this I could not enter any more orders into NT. I had to restart both TWS and NT to solve the problem.

All these problems have in common that NT locks itself, when performing a task, in particular
- starting NT
- connecting to TWS
- saving downloaded backfill
- changing instruments of connected charts
- transmitting orders to TWS

All of the incidents only occur occasionally, all can be solved by shutting down NT and restarting it, and only (5) is really annoying. For (5) it is not clear whether it is caused by NT or the API of TWS.

Do you have any ideas what eventually could have produced the incidents?

[NinjaTrader_RJ]

Running NT 6.5.1000.7, TWS 887.2, .NET 2 Service Pack 1, Java 1.6.0_07

(1) NT sometimes does not start but freezes when showing NT Logo and control center - other elements of workspace, i.e. charts and DOM do not show up. NT then has to be removed from the Windows task manager. The second trial to start NT usually works.

(2) Sometimes NT does not connect to Interactive Brokers (Connection would not turn green). Shutting NT down without saving workspace and restarting it solves the problem.

(3) When loading backfill NT sometimes halts when saving the data. The "Saving...." popup remains on top indefinitely. No more data loading is possible after this incident. Shutting down NT without saving workspace and restarting it again solves the problem. This issue is not related to slow backfill of IB.

(4) I have three connected charts in my default workspace. When I change instruments, sometimes only one of the three charts shows up while the other two charts will produce empty frames. The empty charts can not be repaired as they do no more respond to clicks with the right mouse button. Only way to get back the charts is to shut down NT without saving the workspace and restart it again.

(5) When I modified the target of a bracket order on the chart trader today, the target did not move but simply changed colours from green to orange, never went green again. The new target was not moved on the charts and not accepted by TWS. After this I could not enter any more orders into NT. I had to restart both TWS and NT to solve the problem.

All these problems have in common that NT locks itself, when performing a task, in particular
- starting NT
- connecting to TWS
- saving downloaded backfill
- changing instruments of connected charts
- transmitting orders to TWS

All of the incidents only occur occasionally, all can be solved by shutting down NT and restarting it, and only (5) is really annoying. For (5) it is not clear whether it is caused by NT or the API of TWS.

Do you have any ideas what eventually could have produced the incidents?

Hello Harry,

Thank you for your post.

1,3 and 4 I may be related to your workspace, which may be corrupt. I suggest removing it and recreating.

2.)
We realize that lost connections can be frustrating. A connection state between NinjaTrader and your broker/market data vendor is not dictated by NinjaTrader. The NinjaTrader application only reports the connection state as it is reported by the API you are connected through. NinjaTrader behaves like a radio receiver in that it receives signals from the connected server. If the signals are not coming through, the underlying broker/market data vendor API reports this to the NinjaTrader application which in turn reports this back to you. Once a loss of connection is reported, NinjaTrader or the underlying API wil continuously try to re-establish a connection.
Common reasons that contribute to connection stability are:

• ISP issues
• Hardware firewall changing IP addresses frequently
• Dynamic IP addresses changing frequently intraday. Usually this happens once a week buy you may want to check with your ISP. If they do change daily, requesting a static IP address may help.
• With Windows XP SP2, if you have more than 10 open TCPIP socket connections (10 programs making socket connections through the internet) Windows will randomly shut down some connections
• Broker/market data servers may be experiencing temporary downtime

5.) Please repair your database: Tools--> Options --> Misc --> Repair DB

[Harry]

Follow up for Ninja Trader Team

I have reinstalled XP and .NET Framework as well as replaced my hard disk since, so with the new installation some of the problems dissapeared, others are back again.

(1) and (2) disappeared.

(3) The Saving Popup problem is as bad as ever. The reason for this is that I am using three intraday charts with different intervals as well as a market analyzer within the same workspace. When connecting

- NT starts updating instruments on the market analyzer
- interrupts this to update the charts
- then (if successful) continues updating the instruments on the MA or (if unsuccesful) simply hangs. Then it needs to be closed and removed from the Windows Task Manager.


It is definitely clear that NT cannot handle updating market analyzer and charts at the same time. I only can speculate that it tries to access the data base for updating charts while the competing process of saving data for updating market analyzer is still under way. This is a major fault of NT that severely impacts its stability. You really should further explore this behaviour!

For me I adopted the following solution: Put the market analyzer in a separate workspace. First update the charts in the default workspace, then afterwards open the separate workspace with the market analyzer, and update those instruments as required by indicators of the market analyzer. This always works and the problem is gone.

This also shows that the problem is caused by NT and not chart templates or market analyzer templates....

(4) The problem of the charts were related to an indicator that used the DrawDiamond() method. This method somehow seems to have a problem releasing memory. Undrawing diamonds takes 20 times longer than drawing them and caused my charts to freeze. I now sharply reduced the lookback period of the indicator using this method, and the problem is gone.

(5) This still happens occasionally but it is probably related to traffic problems occuring on TWS.

[NinjaTrader_RJ]

Hi Harry,

Thank you for reporting.

I will send your findings to our development team.

[ctrlbrk]

(1) NT sometimes does not start but freezes when showing NT Logo and control center - other elements of workspace, i.e. charts and DOM do not show up. NT then has to be removed from the Windows task manager. The second trial to start NT usually works.

This happens to me all the time as well. It also happens to three different friends of mine.

(2) Sometimes NT does not connect to Interactive Brokers (Connection would not turn green). Shutting NT down without saving workspace and restarting it solves the problem.

I used to experience this as well. I no longer use IB, and have switched to Amp/Zen. The same thing occasionally happens with Amp/Zen. There appears to be no internal Ninja timeout during the initial connection, or if something goes wrong, Ninja just waits forever. I have at least one friend who has experienced this as well.

(3) When loading backfill NT sometimes halts when saving the data. The "Saving...." popup remains on top indefinitely. No more data loading is possible after this incident. Shutting down NT without saving workspace and restarting it again solves the problem. This issue is not related to slow backfill of IB.

This happens to me all the time. I can use the exact same period range, exact same strategy, exact same everything. It will work over and over, then occasionally it will hang. It is not necessarily a 1.3GB problem, because I've watched taskmgr and sometimes it happens with small amounts of memory as well. It has happened immediately after I open a brand new NT session, but it frequently happens the longer NT is open, since NT has serious memory problems.

(4) I have three connected charts in my default workspace. When I change instruments, sometimes only one of the three charts shows up while the other two charts will produce empty frames. The empty charts can not be repaired as they do no more respond to clicks with the right mouse button. Only way to get back the charts is to shut down NT without saving the workspace and restart it again.

I haven't seen this, but primarily because I gave up on workspaces. Ninja seems to save whatever it wants, without me pressing "Save Workspace", and it loads whatever it wants (not the last workspace all the time), so I just gave up trying.

(5) When I modified the target of a bracket order on the chart trader today, the target did not move but simply changed colours from green to orange, never went green again. The new target was not moved on the charts and not accepted by TWS. After this I could not enter any more orders into NT. I had to restart both TWS and NT to solve the problem.

This happened to me all the time. I'm sure you can find multiple posts on this forum discussing it. Of course, I was apparently the only person who ever had these issues. Yeah right. But, I can tell you on this particular issue, it is related to TWS or the way Ninja's API uses TWS. Once I switched to Zen Fire, I no longer experienced this.

Good luck getting anything fixed.
Mike