System Slow ?
On Ctrl Alt Del I do not notice MetaTrader taking up a lot of memory. Any advice would be appreciated.
I do keep deleting the expert log files and the tester log files so they are never more than 2-3 MB.
The memory problem is something you need to investigate further. The Performance Monitor is a useful utility for this. Keep track of the Available MBytes counter, and it should show you at which point the memory gets gobbled up. A likely culprit is the amount of history you are keeping - limit the number of bars in Tools/Options/Charts. Another that I came across was how you use the Array functions, if this is EA related.
The logs files don't affect performance.
Hi skt1977,
MT4/MQL4 Specific: Have you tried shutting your computer COMPLETELY off (see below) then restarting it without it starting MT4/MQL4 running AT ALL? Look in the task manager and see if it already has components of it: programs, processes or services running even though you have not actually started it up yourself yet. If not select them by right clicking on all components of it in the ‘Programs’ section and close them. Also look in the ‘Process’ tab and use the ‘End Process Tree’ &/or the ‘End Process’ to shut all relevant ones down. In the ‘Services’ section, you can change the settings to ‘manual’ and they won’t start up until needed. If you have a utility that allows you to control which non essential programs and TSRs are getting activated when you start your computer up. If your computer is like most modern computers, ~2/3 of them are non essential and you can change the settings so they don’t always start every time you start your computer. They will start up only when you want and need them. This can be a very significant factor and can use up a lot of your computer resources needlessly. TuneUp Utilites are an excellent set of system tools with good value and has a ‘StartUp Control’ manager that lets you select which ones you want and don’t allow to start when windows starts up. If you are using XP, it also has a memory manager that works better than the windows one does and has options that you can choose and set (be careful!) You may find some of them have shortcuts in the ‘StartUp Folder’ whose location will vary with which version of windows you are using and you can temporarily move them from there, restart it and see how it runs then. If you are using XP or earlier windows, MicroSoft has an ‘unsupported’ utility suite that was originally made and used by MS employees for their own MS computers that is a free download that may have a ‘StartUp’ manager’. Search MicroSoft for ‘Power Tools’ or TweakUI.Exe’ If any of these things have been applicable to your system. How does it run now? If it is significantly different, I suggest that copy the personal data from MT/MQL that you want to keep to a different location and then completely uninstall all MT/MQL programs, manually delete any leftovers and then follow the methods below for cleaning, repairing and optimizing your system and then reinstall it.
Cleaning, repairing and optimizing any computer system:
Drivers: Have you installed any new hardware &/or updated any drivers for your hardware? Some older pieces of hardware in your computer may (only) run better or at all with older drivers. There are a number of utilities for monitoring and keeping your drivers up to date. I have used many of them over the years and most of the caused more problems than they solved. I have one that works well now called ‘Driver Robot’ from Blitware.Com. These software interfaces are crucial.
Windows (Registry) : It may or may not be your MT4/MQL4, or it may be only a part of the problem. Recent versions of windows with their single massive registry, which controls everything in the OS from one file now is a mixed blessing.
Like your hard drives, it can become fragmented and filed with (partially) left over junk, and a LOT of errors and SIGNIFICANTLY slow your computer down and make it MUCH less stable.
I use three different sets of utilities to clean and defragment my registry and keep it in good condition which makes a VERY significant difference in both the speed and the stability of your computer system:
The first one I have used for many years now and comes with a good, effective set of system utilities at a reasonable price: ‘Tune Up Utilities’ from wWw.Tune-Up.Com. It also has a ‘One Click Maintenance’ routine that checks and optimizes your entire system and runs in the background occasionally that is effective. If you are using XP, it has a good memory manager as well.
One comes from AVS4You.Com that have a lot of good programs, mostly orientated to Audio/Visuals which is what they started out with. This software maker provides great value. If you buy one of their (major?) products, you get a lifetime subscription to ALL of their products!
The final one is a standalone Registry cleaner and defragmenter: ‘Registry Booster’ from UniBlue. I recommend that you click on the second ‘Registry Scan’ tab and select the ‘System Drivers’ as well before running these.
Two of them have a both a ‘Cleaning and Defragmenting’ routines. I start with the cleaning and then defragment.
I have used these for years and have NEVER had an instance where they made thing worse (1st rule: Do NO Harm!) and many times the improvement is very noticeable. They have an (optional/scaled) restore point for safety.
Don’t think that after you have done a clean installation and updating of Windows, if that is what you are using, doesn’t have any errors in it just because it is freshly installed. I have encountered such circumstances where Windows alone had over 400 errors in the registry with only Windows freshly installed and fully updated and the registry utilities installed !
Most windows computers are pretty stable now compared to the early days of windows when it was taken for granted that if you were using your computer for a whole day that it would crash (with the infamous BSoD: Blue Screen of Death) &/or freeze up a couple of times day and need rebooting and usually resulted in a loss of current data (Save, Save Save! Every 5 to 15 minutes). A ‘restart’ &/or ‘warm boot is NOT the same as a ‘cold boot’ or completely shutting it down and then restarting it. To do this,shut it down, turn the power supply off, hold the start switch in for 15 seconds to drain of all residual power that may still be keeping errors in your RAM, then restart it. I recommend that you first start in Windows ‘Safety mode’. Press the F8 key after your computer has gone through most of the hardware initiation routine but before it starts to completely load Windows. This will bring up a menu of startup options so that you can select the ‘Safety Mode’ to start up in. If you are unsure when to press the F8 key, just keep pressing it repeatedly until you get to this start up options menu. Once it has completely finished starting up in this mode, which doesn’t take anywhere near as long as starting up in the full, regular windows mode as it doesn’t load most of the things that are normally started up. Then restart it into the regular windows mode.
Hard Drives : As indicated earlier, hard drives do become defragmented as well. This means that it ends up splitting up single files, programs etc and storing them in many different physical locations on the hard drive. It’s not hard to see and understand how this can and will slow your systems overall performance by the heads having to jump all over the place to get a single file for you and as well tends to make it less stable and reliable. Other than removable memory such as floppies, tape drives (rarely used in personal computers) and perhaps ‘External hard drives’, usually your hard drives are the slowest part of your computer and the biggest ‘bottle neck’. They run orders of magnitudes slower than the ‘solid state’ components of your PC such as the CPU and RAM memory. You should check them for errors first with the ‘AutoFix’ option selected. Then run the Disk Defragmenter. As with many things in Windows, alas MicroSoft continues to ‘dumb down’ such things to make them simpler and more ‘idiot proof’ which also removes a lot of functionality, options and generally leaves them at ‘the lowest common’ denominator and the current standard Windows disk defragmenters do not do as good of a job as they used to, or at least when used in the ’Default mode’. There are a couple of options: many suites of utilities that still have the broader and more powerful settings available. Most utility (suites) are just more comprehensive graphical user interfaces of standard windows, components, commands and utilities. In (Vista) there is still the old style ‘DOS’ command prompt windows available that allows you to still select these more advanced options. Enter ‘Defrag /?’ for the options available. One of them especially is especially relevant to this: the ‘ –w’ options which makes the Defragmenter to do a more thorough, comprehensive and better defragmentation of your hard drives. You should also be aware of the ‘surface scan’ option. This literally scans every memory spot on the surface of the hard drives and permanently ’locks out’ any that it finds to be dead, malfunctioning or marginal. This option takes considerably longer than just a disk defragmentation does, which given the large size of most modern hard drives can already take an appreciable amount of time the size of, it is best performed when you are not going to need you r computer for quite some time: when you have gone to bed for the night and have to work next morning. If you are going away for a couple of days or the weekend and have a numerous Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) as I do on my PCs, this is a good time to select them all and let it scan the surface of all of your HDDs. I recently recovered an older XP installation on this PC from a failing IDE HDD RAID array with the surface scan.
Background tasks and ‘Terminate and Stay Resident’ (TSR) programs: I partially addressed this at the beginning of this article. These cannot be over stressed because of their potential to utilize a significant portion of your computer resources before you even start to do anything that you want to do. Many security programs and utilities will work in the background without your knowledge and really bog your computer down. One such instance of this is one security program that I use: Spyware Doctor from PC tools, which is an excellent security program except for two factors, one of which will be hopefully addressed and resolved soon as it has known compatibility problems with MT4/MQL4. The other is its capability to work in the background while you are using the computer. This uses up so many computer resources, including constantly accessing the HDDs that it drastically slows, lags and bogs the computer down so much that it is basically useless. This is easily rectified by adjusting these scan settings so that it only takes place when you are not using it. If you have a regular schedule, set these up accordingly so as not to interfere with you when you are using the computer. If your usage tends to be more haphazard, do as suggested above and run the (comprehensive) scans when you are not using it. The problem with this is remembering to do them REGULARILY. I have numerous security layers and programs. Along with the more common main stream ‘Virus Protection’ suites such as McAfee etc as I indicated above I also utilize Spyware Doctor from PC Tools and ‘NoAdware’ from NoAdware.NET as opposed to *.com. I bring these up because the two of them find infections and take appropriate actions to deal with them than the McAfee suite does BY FAR! Where the McAfee comprehensive suite may only find one infection, if that, the other two may find dozens each! I won’t go into the hazards and problems including significant loss of performance of your computer as these are fairly well known. If you need more information on them the wWw is full of it. The numerous manufacturers of security programs will be only too happy to provide you with information, hazards and ‘horror stories’ of operating your computer without THEIR program. (< 8)
So as well as the other important regular maintenance schedules that can make a significant difference in keeping your computer operating well and its performance maintained, be on the lookout for things operating in the background that you may not be aware of. Recent versions of Windows all have low level, high priority OS utilities that you can be used to quantify these, IN XP, it can be accessed though the old tried and true windows emergency ‘3 finger salute’: ‘Crt-Alt-Del’ In later versions of windows you can still access this info with this method and then select the ‘Task Manager’ or you can access it directly by right clicking in the Task Bar and selecting it directly.
While this information is directed specifically to Widows installations, all of the principals hold true and are effective in keeping your computer running at its peak performance all the time. By virtue of the fact that you are here, it may be more than ‘just frustrating’, you likely have (significant) amounts of money dependant on the efficient and reliable operation of your computer.
(8 >) . . Do your Computer Maintenance Often and Prosper . . (< 8)
Reduce the number of bars on you charts -- Tools - Options -- Charts and restart MT4
I set it to 2500 usually.
Run with a naked chart, check performance/memory. test with the indicators/EAs you use, you may find something.
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I remember a few months back when I installed MetaTrader 4.0 fresh. My machine used to be a reasoably fast machine. However, For the last few weeks, I am noticing the system has become very slow. Infact, it seems, when MT is running, the system as a whole slows down. Editors take time to follow the key strokes on screen ? I have a 2Gig RAM on this machine and around 20 Gig HDD storage free on this machine. I am sure I am missing something.
On Ctrl Alt Del I do not notice MetaTrader taking up a lot of memory. Any advice would be appreciated.
I do keep deleting the expert log files and the tester log files so they are never more than 2-3 MB.
Would someone please guide me what I need to check ?
regards
Sat