EA BackTesting -- Need some Advice

[JKW]

Afternoon,

I am new to MQL4 and MetaTrader. I've just written my first EA, and I'm doing some backtesting. I have a few questions on back testing OR if someone can point me to a good best practives doc, I would appreciate it.

So, the EA I created has MoneyManagent, Risk Percent, Stop Loss, Take Profit, Trailing Stop, Min Profit, a date/time to make active, and of course the strategy variables themselves.

So, if I try to optimize everything, it shows 29 hours to complete.

1) Is there a way to speed the optimization up?  The CPU only takes up about 16% of total CPU Usage. Is there a setting to say use more CPU?

2) The model methodology has three settings.....one for Candle Opens, Every Tick, and Control Points. Is there a methodology to this to speed the process up? For example, I tried Candle Opens, which worked faster, then picked the best optimized results, and ran it using Every Tick. However, every tick proved a loss vs. the candle open which had a profit.

3) Do you have a methodology you would recommend: example....

       a) Optimize Strategy Only 1st -- ie...leave out MoneyManagement Risk Percent, etc.......
       b) Use Tick or Candle Open first?
       c) Take Optimized Strategy and add optimize with other components....MoneyManagement, Risk, etc....

I'm really looking for a way to optimize the process. Best Practices. I want to be able to quickly eliminate a strategy vs spend all my time testing out a single strategy. 

Any help, would be appreciated.

Thanks, JKW