Help!! PC much slower after I used tester strategy...

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Good day to everyone!

I've been using the tester strategy to make optimization for last two days.

Obviously, PC slowed down while calculating; but now it is still very slow (BTW I hear the HD running continuosly...) while using MetaTrader4 and I'm not using any optimization or EA.

Does anyone know what is happened? is it possible that some setting has changed during optimization?

Many thanks,

dopa

 

I think there is a bug or memory leak in the MT4 tester.

I've seen a real slowdown, and a sudden 10-fold increase in memory usage.

This happends when you bring up the graph while the tester is running your EA.

Solution: Wait till the tester has finished befor you look at the chart(tab).

 
DayTrader wrote >>

I think there is a bug or memory leak in the MT4 tester.

I've seen a real slowdown, and a sudden 10-fold increase in memory usage.

This happends when you bring up the graph while the tester is running your EA.

Solution: Wait till the tester has finished befor you look at the chart(tab).

Many thanks DayTrader,

I'll use your suggest.

anyway, for now I still have issues, because MT4 is very very slow even if I'm not using the tester anymore!

it's like, as you said, it is using more memory than needed.

but it uses even if I'm just trying to make the simplest operation in MT4!

do you know how I could come back to "old days"?

thanks,

dopa

 
You might also want to check the "tester" directory. With long tests, very large data files are put into the directory, often multiple GBs in size! So, if you're already low on disk space, this would almost certainly affect performance.
 

If you made the EA or indicator yourself (or if its not a commercial one) it can have a bug (excessive looping, not releasing memory(objects), etc ) that causes it.

Computer must have enough memory, high HDD activity is nearly "proof" of too little memory.

 
dopa1317:

anyway, for now I still have issues, because MT4 is very very slow even if I'm not using the tester anymore!

it's like, as you said, it is using more memory than needed.

Check whether that is the issue or not by running Windows Performance Monitor "Available Mbytes". There are certain situations on my PC where the free memory on the chart drops like a cliff, like when I optimised several parameters at the same time on certain symbols. When I see that, I cut down the number of parameters, and restart the terminal to free up the memory.


But if you don't get the performance back after restart or tester is no longer running (the terminal no longer running too right, not just tester?), and you don't see free memory dropping, you probably have other issues on your PC.

 

most time, it caused by bad design of indicators.

may be some heavycalculation job did inside indicators.

chack the arithmetic used inside indicatoes.

 

Thanks to everyone for your help.

summing everything up:

since last use of tester something has changed on the way MT4 is working, it uses more memory and CPU than ever (even if I'm not using the tester anymore), so it is very slow and it makes difficult to open manually an order or trying to zoom in chart etc.

the indicators I'm using are the same, and there are not huge files on HD...

I'm quite sure that it depends on "swapping datas" on HD, because I can hear the HD noise from the very moment I start MT4 till I close it...

I'll try to investigate further, in the case this weekend I'll save all files EA, scripts in a separate directory and will uninstall MT4 and install it newly...

all suggestions in the meanwhile will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again,

dopa

 
dopa1317:

Thanks to everyone for your help.

summing everything up:

since last use of tester something has changed on the way MT4 is working, it uses more memory and CPU than ever (even if I'm not using the tester anymore), so it is very slow and it makes difficult to open manually an order or trying to zoom in chart etc.

the indicators I'm using are the same, and there are not huge files on HD...

I'm quite sure that it depends on "swapping datas" on HD, because I can hear the HD noise from the very moment I start MT4 till I close it...

I'll try to investigate further, in the case this weekend I'll save all files EA, scripts in a separate directory and will uninstall MT4 and install it newly...

all suggestions in the meanwhile will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again,

dopa

MT4 is quite hungry on memory. When there is too little memory the PC starts using the HDD (Swap File, PageFile) as memory...VERY slow compared to RAM.

I have 800MB free memory with 2 different MT4s running, along with other stuff... No problems.

Panning or scrolling charts back may cause MT4 to download more historical data for that particular TF... slow network can significantly slow down this scrolling...

no excessive HDD activity though.

Get more RAM, thats your solution. Todays xp / vista machines typically need 1-4GB.

 
DayTrader wrote >>

MT4 is quite hungry on memory. When there is too little memory the PC starts using the HDD (Swap File, PageFile) as memory...VERY slow compared to RAM.

I have 800MB free memory with 2 different MT4s running, along with other stuff... No problems.

Panning or scrolling charts back may cause MT4 to download more historical data for that particular TF... slow network can significantly slow down this scrolling...

no excessive HDD activity though.

Get more RAM, thats your solution. Todays xp / vista machines typically need 1-4GB.

Thank you DayTrader,

yes, MT4 is very hungry, but the strange is that before using the tester it was "normally hungry", and since I have 3GB I could use it as I use other programs.

after last time I've used the tester something has changed.

I don't remember I've used a certain new command or procedure (but I cannot swear on this!)... but MT4 behaviour changed definetely since then.

Anyway, thanks for this new idea.

dopa

 
"...but the strange is that before using the tester it was "normally hungry", and since I have 3GB I could use it as I use other programs.

after last time I've used the tester something has changed."

how about considering:

  1. Before and After Registry snapshots - there is the hard way of manually doing this or finding utility to either do snaps and compare or realTime monitor
  2. Terminal, I believe has some configuration/settings files. Could updated data be indicating more memory usage is to be used?

fwiw

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