Anyone experiencing delays the past few days?

[shaeffer]

Hi Jason,

I got back in town late Monday night, so ran eSignal (10.1) on Tuesday with no changes. For the first half of the day it was essentially unusable. The charts were either Not Responding or often when Task Mgr showed they were Running the charts seemed delayed relative to my IB data and other freebie charts I have on my 2nd computer. (I have to confirm that, because shouldn't they be up to date if still Running?) In any case, even when Running it seemed I had to cross check with other sources, which essentially made the eSignal charts unusable.

Anyway, Tuesday night I updated to 10.2, and removed many of my old trend lines - no chart now has more than 50, many have none. And it was worse today (Wednesday), maybe because this was a higher volume day than Tuesday. Previously if I left them alone the charts would eventually unfreeze. Today, twice they stayed locked up for over 15 minutes so I had to shutdown and reopen the program. I let the trouble report auto send to eSignal the first time, if that helps. After the first 45 minutes, the freeze-ups continued, but at least they started running again without a re-startup after a few minutes.

Again, they seem to operate on the edge, where they are ok if I don't touch anything, but freeze as soon as I try to do something.

I'll try 10.2 again tomorrow (it was nice that everything, even my hotkeys copied over during the upgrade). I just went thru and deleted old .lay .at .ch .quo .eqb and .ach files. There were a lot of old ones in there, maybe that will make a difference.

Otherwise, I'll try 8.0 again on Friday, just to see. Before the 10.1 upgrade, I saved the whole Program to an eSignal_8_Copy folder. To run 8.0 again, can I just click on the winsig.exe file in that folder, or do I need to re-install 8.0?

Regards
Shaeffer

[Rainer Bilek]

Hi,
Yes - I have delays too. This is true for ES (on heavy volume), $OEX (most delayed - up to 1 minute), $SPX (most delayed - up to 1 minute) and never the same price as shown by my Broker feed which delivers prices direct from Exchange. Same with $INDU. It seems that $INDU and $SPX are calculated by eSignal and are not sourced from exchange.
These are the most important Symbols for me.

And THESE DELAYES ARE VERY ANOYING!

Now - my PC is one of the fastest model available with endless resources and the processors are feeling bored all the time.
I am using still Version 8 of eSignal. I have tried Version 10.x, but it is freezing every few seconds, as described in this thread. Freezing in Version 8 is seldom for me.
I have to start eSignal a lot of times each day until I can catch a server that works well for some time. Then I have to restart again due to delays describes above. (BTW - I use several Products to check and trace Internet Speed and Quality of Service. It is all OK. so the problem can not be found with the Internet connection and not with Hardware).

THIS IS ANYTHING - BUT REALTIME.

In addition - last days the daily ES prices were wrong.
I am only using 49 Symbols at a time. AND only 8 Symbols on charts.
I AM FURIOUS.

When looking on the announcement for new eSignal versions, I always find a lot of new functions.
Basically good - BUT MAKE WORKING WHAT IS ALREADY THERE - Then - after that implement new functions.

[shaeffer]

I was encouraged that 10.2 was working with only 10 second freeze-ups (every 5 minutes or so) this morning. And it kept working ok thru the early afternoon. But the last hour it was totally useless. My QQQQ charts froze at 31.80 (40 minutes before the close) and did not unfreeze until 5 minutes after the close.

Although I think you are aware already that the antiquated single thread design of eSignal is a major cause for the freezing (the program's inability to process the data fast enough), the attached chart of $TVOLQ illustrates this problem. My charts completely froze up in the last hour today (corresponding to the large TVOLQ bar at the end of today) and the freeze up yesterday morning (per yesterdays note below) corresponds to the large $TVOLQ bar at the start of yesterday.

The program simply can not handle busy markets, which is when you need it most.

I took screen caps today of my Windows Task Mgr Performance display, showing one half of my Hyper-Threaded CPU is mostly near it maximum, and the other half mostly near its minimun, i.e. showing the program can ony use half my CPU's capability. It sounds like others with dual core processors are encountering the same thing.

I'll switch back to 8.0 tonight. If that doesn't work tomorrow, I'm not sure yet what I'll do. If the program is not freezing up, then I'm continually cross checking it will other sources to decide if I can believe what I see. In these fast market conditions a trader can not 'Trade in the Zone' if half his attention is spent in cross checking that the charts are current. Sorry, but in these markets the program is next to useless.

Regards
Shaeffer

[shaeffer]

Here's the CPU Performance display mentioned in my note below

[ACM]

Shaeffer
FWIW I have been disabling HyperThreading on my computers for a long time as I found that they performed better without it [not just with eSignal but overall]
You may want to try disabling it and see if that improves the performance
Alex

Originally posted by shaeffer
...I took screen caps today of my Windows Task Mgr Performance display, showing one half of my Hyper-Threaded CPU is mostly near it maximum, and the other half mostly near its minimun, i.e. showing the program can ony use half my CPU's capability....

[shaeffer]

Thanks for the suggestion Alex.

Right now I only have eSignal running on this computer, as well as necessary security software. Presumably the security software is now running in one half of the CPU and eSignal in the other. By removing HT, maybe somehow more of the CPU will be available to eSignal? I don't understand computer internals enough to know, but I'm willing to give it a try. I've already switched back to 8.0 (eSignal_80r1.exe) so I'll see how that works tomorrow, then try it with no HT, then try 10.2 with no HT.

If it helps, I'll post my experience in this forum. Thanks again for the suggestion.

Shaeffer

[shaeffer]

Updated Release of 8.0 possible?

I'm astounded! 8.0 has not frozen even once today so far, even though the first bar in the $TVOLQ chart today is twice the size of the first bar yesterday. In fact the volume in the first one hour today = the volume in the first two hours yesterday. The downside with 8.0 is I had to kick-start some of the charts again to get them started after the markets opened.

The problem that required the kick-start (Ctrl-OK) of charts to get them updating in 8.0 seems to be fixed in 10.x. Any chance of applying that fix to an updated release of 8.0?

(I still have HT enabled, fyi)

Regards
Shaeffer

[linus71]

Version 10.1 did freeze sometimes in the past few days.
It freezes for a few seconds, sometimes up to 5 minutes during a high volume surge.
After the 1st freeze when the second or third wave were coming it was performing okay.

Funny that you mention that, Shaeffer:
I've never had problems with version 8.0 like I have nowadays with v10.1.

Linus

[shaeffer]

Don't know if this helps, but the graphic below summarizes where the higher volume caused freeze-ups (while trading the QQQQ) in 10.x this week. With 8.0r1 there are some charts I need to kick-start to get them updating after the market open, but amazingly there was not a single freeze-up in Friday's much higher volume day.

For me (a US equities/ETF trader), there are only a couple of minor nice-to-have features in 10.x (the all in one Edit > Studies window, and the abiltity to shift studies vertically) and one major improvement (not needing to kick start charts), but I'm more than happy to give those up to get dependable charts, so I'll be sticking with 8.0.

Regards
Shaeffer

[eSignal_AveryH]

Shaeffer,

Thank you for taking the time to document your experiences. This information will be helpful for our Engineers in exploring the issues you and others have reported.

Linus71,
As we’ve ask others on this thread, our engineers have been doing some internal testing for this type of problem and needs some additional information. Could you please give us the specs of your machine (processor, memory and OS).



Also, please post a copy of your page file (.pg) here. If you are not comfortable with posting it publicly, post it to file share and send the url via PM. Or create a test page file that you experience the delays or freezing with so we can do some testing with the same page files.

Any other users experiencing this type of issue please feel free to provide this information and page files as well.

[linus71]

I have to correct myself: It's not that the whole application freezes during those spikes. The Adv-Charts were working fine but it's the Bid-Ask, Trade, and Volume quotes in the Quote window that freeze.

I'm running Windows 2000 SP4.
1.8 GHz and 1024 RAM.
I see that's at the lower end of the system requirements.

[radix]

eSignal Agony

Since September and the install (upgrade ?) of 10.1
and then 10.1a and then 10.2 trying to use the eSignal
application during RTH has been pure AGONY.

I spent hours setting up layouts just so - and just
when the market opens, the application dies -
no data, nothing.

Then the data manager drops me - no data and no password !
Gimme a break.

Re-boot application.
Re-boot box.
Re-boot trade strategy.

And then the makert lurches and I have a dead screen.
Again.

Been a long-time user. Never seen anything this bad.
Great time in the market to be flying blind !

Switched back to rev 8.2.
It's reasonably stable as compared to the 10 series.

I want compensation as an unsolicuted Beta-Tester.
Have you noticed the doubling of the download file size?

Sorry gentlemen. but bigger is not always better.

Oh, I almost forgot, don't even try seeking help from the "Suport Team". Most are very well intentioned, but inadequately trained individuals.

They are unfailingly polite, but after spending 30, 45, 60 minutes on the call and several consults with their "supervisors" or "the programmers" etc. and having tried numerous, repetitive re-install, de-install, re-boot sequences, one realises that he will NEVER speak with a knowledgeable counterparty who understands the nuancees and features of this once great application.

Woe is us.

[eSignal_AveryH]

Linus,

Thanks for sending over the page. Once we have results from the testing or we have any questions we'll post back here.

Thank again

AveryH
eSignal Support

[Shimari]

I am seeing almost no "historical" data, only real-time ticks. Historical meaning "now" going backwards, even for todays morning ticks. Is there something about the way my eSignal page is configured? (which hasn't changed for weeks or months and has always worked) Or is the data feed just not able to deliver fast enough? Or does "historical" data get throttled when the trade volume is very high ?? Or maybe it's getting dropped in my firewall??? I notice that Microsoft did a security update last night in the middle of the night. Is anybody else having a problem with historical data? I can't even get a "daily" chart to show data.

Regards,

-Shimari

(maybe I should have started a new thread, but it seemed to fit the title?)

[eSignal_AveryH]

Shimari,

Checking your connection I don't see that you've connected to any of our history or tick servers today.

If security updates were done to your firewall or computer you might want to make sure that the necessary ports for eSignal to work have not been closed. Click
here to see information on Firewall and Proxy Server configurations.

Current connections for you account show one connection for the Data Manager.

AveryH
eSignal Support