Anyone experiencing delays the past few days?

[demarcog]

For some reason this week I see price updates coming into the Data Manager without delay, but the price changes are not being reflected in my charts. I've seen delays for up to a minute and at times eSignal is frozen solid requiring a restart.

I've stripped down as much as possible in my layout, removed all my custom studies and have a quote window open with 50 symbols.

I have a dozen 5 minute dynamic charts open with several stock index symbols and a few large cap stocks. The studies loaded are stochastics, ADXDM and several exponential moving averages.

I'm also plotting external exponental moving averages on all my charts, ie., on 5 minute charts I'm plotting 15, 60 and 240 minute exponental moving averages for the same symbol.

I'm running version 10.2 the 8/29/08 build.

If anyone has any suggestions it would be appreciated as it's very difficult to trade with the delays I'm experiencing.

Thanks,

glen

[Christine B]

Glen,

could you pls PM me your page and I will try to replicate it on my machine.

thanks,

[shaeffer]

Hey Glen

I was on the phone to Tech Support for 45 minutes two days ago trying to find a solution .. no luck. I have a 'trading only' computer, but even after moving IB and Quotetracker off it so only eSignal 10.1 (and the minimum security software) is left, still eSignal hangs up dozens of times a day. I now leave the Windows Task Manager >> Applications open so I can readily see when eSignal windows are 'Not Responding' and at least save the frustration of trying to draw a trend line, or so I can instantly see at trade critical times not to bother looking at the eSignal charts and instead use the free charts provided by another trading platform on my second computer. It was getting so I'd start the first point of a trend line, and have to wait 3 seconds before the program would allow me to select the second point.

I've reduced the number of charts open, reduced the number of monitors I use with eSignal, optimized efs's as best I can, eliminated excess rays and lines, have only 87 symbols and still the hang ups. Its gotten much worse in the last week. I have a 3.0GHZ P4 Dell computer with 1GB of memory and am now using four monitors.

I've got 30 charts, many with multiple studies each. The only solution I was given was to reduce the number of charts, reduce the studies, and/or reduce the efs's. If I do all that I'll end up with what I can get for free elsewhere. Supposedly 10.2 has some CPU useage improvements - I hope so.

I'll be interested to hear if you find a solution.

Regards
Shaeffer

[demarcog]

Shaeffer,

Thanks very much for the detailed information, your situation sounds very similiar to my own.

I've given up on my usual configuration and reduced my layout to 3 charts with only 2 studies and a quote board with 50 stocks and futures.

I am still getting locked out of esignal, today for example at exactly 9:30 it locked up and whenever the market seems to get busy: today at 10:00 a.m economic news, etc.

The data manager is gettting price updates, but esignal itself locks up. My guess it's just a matter of time before the developers modify esignal to handle the data. I just hope it's soon.

thanks again,

glen

[demarcog]

Christine B,

I appreciate your offer to investigate this problem. I don't see the option to attach a file when I send a PM message?

I have no problem sharing my layout and will attach it tomorrow morning. I've created so many in recent days I want to make sure I send you the correct.

I'm rebuilding my layout to try and identify what may be contributing to the problem.

I've started with a new quote page of approximately 50 symbols and 3 charts without any studies. That seems to worked fine for several hours. Then I added a stochastic and adxdm study to the 3 charts. So far so good, no delays.

I added a Aget Regression Study and will see if that causes any delays tomorrow morning.

thanks again,

glen

[shaeffer]

Hello Christine,

Today was worse than FOMC day (Tuesday). My charts were 'Not Responding' (per Task Manager) about 2/3's of the morning, then they locked up completely in the early afternoon. It seems like they operate 'on the edge', where they are ok if I don't do anything, then as soon as I click my hotkey to draw a trend line, everything changes to 'Not Responding'.

In the afternoon I finally had to shut down and restart, at which time I opened only 10 charts (no quote lists or anything else). The Data Mgr said I had 36 symbols open .. some I don't recognize (such as $PLAYBACK, $WRSYMCNT, $WRCIDR and ROSCOMMAND_NP, _OP and _TP). Can I delete these? Other symbols listed I usually use, but not in this reduced layout (and my Alerts list was empty) so should I delete these also?

The 10 chart layout had only a few lockups, until the QQQQ's broke above 40.25 in the last hour at which time everything was frozen more often than not.

Waynecd in the Beta forum said "Further testing seems to indicate that a significant part of what bogs down eSignal is the use of higher time intervals on a lower interval chart via the sym(Stock,Interval) function". I do display daily MA's in a 15 minute chart - I'll try removing them tomorrow. Otherwise do I have to try to rebuild my charts piece by piece to find the problem, or do you have any other suggestions?

Regards
Shaeffer

[demarcog]

Anyone experience unusual delays today?

I recently rebuilt my layout.

I started with one chart and a very simple quote page, all went well with performance.

Over the course of a few days I added charts and studies one by one and all still ran very well. I was even able to remove the checkbox on EFS-Tools that forced Compute on Close, enabling tick by tick processing. In the past removing this check box would almost immediately hang eSignal.

Today for some reason, alfter running well for three days, eSignal hung repeatedly, especially this afternoon even with the EFS-TOOLS, Compute on close option enabled (box checked to disable tick by tick processing).

It would be interested in hearing from other forum members if they also experienced delays today?

I'm going to reboot my PC as there were earlier posts suggesting that a possible memory leak issue was resolved by rebooting.

The fact that I was running fine for several days, even with several studies firing trades to the paper trader on a tick by tick basis is extremely encouraging.

I have been very vocal, perhaps too much so in reporting the problems. In fairness I have seen a dramatic improvement recently which is fantastic as far as I'm concerned.

It wasn't my intent to repeatedly "beat up" on support, but didn't believe it was in anyones long term interest to ignore or deny the serious issues.

The good news is we are definately getting closer to what is hopefully a permanent resolution.

For those like me who have stayed aboard this long I would recommend staying the course.

Bottom line when it works well, like it has for many years prior to recent months, eSignal was and remains, IMHO, the best product out there, bar none and I've used most of them.

Good Luck,

Glen

[shaeffer]

Re: Anyone experience unusual delays today?

Originally posted by demarcog
I would be interested in hearing from other forum members if they also experienced delays today?
Glen

Hi Glen,

Although last week (FOMC and bail out announcement week) my charts (mostly trading QQQQ) were frozen more often than not, the last three days (including today) have had such low volume that freeze-ups have been rare, and not lastly for more than 5 seconds.

Hope this helps

Shaeffer

[waynecd]

Hello Glen,

I had very serious lags and eSignal freeze ups last week. Things improved dramatically with a totaly clean build of my charts and layouts. I still had several short (5-10 second) freeze ups.

Yesterday eSignal froze again twice, once for about a minute and the second was over 4 minutes so I rebooted. Then back to normal.

Wayne

[demarcog]

Possible perfoormance issue with GET Stochastic

After rebooting I still experienced excessive delays. Basically eSignal was hanging for minutes at a time and it was difficult to terminate it even with the task manager.

I started a new layout with only about ten one minute charts and added a study at a time.

When I added the GET Stochastics study on the tem 1 minute charts eSignal froze. After removing the Get stochastic study eSignal ran fine.

I then realized that yesterday I replaced the default stochastics study with the GET stochastic study, not giving it much thought.

I'm not certain but at this point it appears that there may be a performace issue with the most recent version of the default Get Stochastics study. I never had an issue in the past with earlier version.

Thanks,


Glen

[eSignal_JasonK]

Hello Glen and Shaeffer,

Our engineers have been doing some internal testing for this type of problem and needs some additional information from you. Could you both please give us the specs of your machines (processor, memory and OS).

Shaeffer:
3.0GHZ P4 Dell computer with 1GB of memory
OS?

Glen:
PC?
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.

[demarcog]

Hello Jason,

My PC is at work and I'm already home so I get you those page files on Monday. I have no problem sending them, they are just standard charts with a few studies loaded.

As I recall is a Dell XPS P4 Duo 3.3 ghz. I did set the CMOS configurations options for Duo mode so it appears to the OS as a two CPU configuration. The OS is Windows XP.

This morning it locked up a few time right before the 9:30 NYSE open. FWIW what's really strange is I double click on any .efs file, just to get eSignal started quickly without the earlier problematic layout,.

Then I can rebuild the same basic layout as the one that hung up. I opened my full 16 charts one at a time with the 50 symbol quote page and it didn't lock up the rest of the day. As if the layout file gets corrupted causing eSignal to loop.

Thanks for the help, good luck with your research. If there is anything you need me from me I'd be happy to help.

Glen

[shaeffer]

Hi Jason,

My further computer details are:

Dell Dimension 4600, P4, 3.0GHz, HT, with 2 GB memory (not 1GB like I said last time). Windows XP Pro - SP3. One Matrox Dual video card and one Matrox Quad video card (though only four monitors are being used now with eSignal).

I run only eSignal on this computer along with minimal support software: Panda Internet Security, Windows Defender, APC Battery backup, Diskeeper. I've spend hours identifying and removing any uneccessary software.

My .pg file was too big to send with this note. I'm out of town next week but I've emailed already my .pg file (and related efs's) to Christine B if you wouldn't mind asking her to forward them to you.

Thanks
Shaeffer

[waynecd]

Hi Jason,

I had a similar thread at: http://forum.esignalcentral.com/show...threadid=28394
I hope it is better to consolidate here.

Well, I have had continued minor to moderate slowdowns to freezes but this morning I'm back to serious data flow freezes (to the point that to get data flowing again I had to close the data manager, wait a couple of minutes, and reload data manager to get data partially flowing). A potentially profitable morning is untradable due to the data isssue.

I have a self built Windows XP Pro SP3 with 2 GB RAM, and an AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual-Core 3.1GHz Processor and a BFG Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT OC AGP with 128 MB RAM.

I've called eSignal to see if a Quad Core, more RAM or a better video card with more memory would help and the impression I get is that it won't at least while there is no multi core capability. Any tried and true upgrade suggestions are appreciated.

Wayne

[eSignal_JasonK]

Hello Shaeffer and Wayne,

Shaeffer, I received your files from Christine. She indicated that you've upgraded to 10.1. I would recommend upgrading to 10.2 as it has additional performance enhancements. Your page file also has an extreme number of line tools that are also very old. This will without question cause performance problems for you. I strongly recommend that you prune the older line tools that you do not need on a regular basis and try to keep the collection for any single chart below 50 if possible. Let us know if you see improvements after these changes.

Wayne,

Thanks for your specs as well. Please post your page as well so we can test it internally.

Keep in mind that the reasons behind delays and freezing are not related to a single element. There seems to be a varying combination of factors. Combined them with the high data rates that we're experiencing, desktop pcs are being pushed to their limits. We are continually looking for ways to optimize the application for better performance in every area possible. Upgrading your pc certainly won't make the situation worse. Multi-threading will help, but this is a project that we won't be able to start until next year.