I consider myself moderately computer literate but I'm having a baffling problem with my trading system. I'm running dual monitors on a P4 2.4 gig with 512 megs ram and a Nvidia Geforce 4 4400 video card. I use IB TWS standalone (newest version) for execution and Qcharts for quotes. My problem is my system was very unresponsive even during times of light market activity. I brought up the Windows XP task manager and noticed that I was using 100% of my cpu cycles almost constantly. I looked in the process section and noticed that javaw.exe (the program that IB tws uses to run a stand alone jawa application in windows) was using an exorbitant amount of cpu time. Since that didn't make any sense to me I started doing a little experimentation. I closed all other programs but TWS but the system was still unresponsive. I decided to log on to TWS from my other computer, also a 2.4 P4 single monitor and loaded up the exact same symbols (about 12) and noticed that the cpu utilization never went over 10%. So here I have 2 relatively identical systems, running the same program with such vastly different cpu utilization. After trying out a few different things I decided to turn of the second monitor in the display properties of the problematic PC and bingo, the CPU utilization drops to below 10%. Now here is the thing that completely baffles me, when I activate the second monitor back, everything continues to work normally for as long as the PC remains turned on, But as soon as I reboot, the same problem starts up again. So every time I start up the PC I have to turn the second monitor OFF then ON again in display properties to get my system to work correctly. Though it isn't exactly that big a deal to do every morning, it just has me totally puzzled by what could possibly be causing this. If the problem reappeared when I reactivate the second monitor I would say it was some kind of driver conflict, but since it doesn't I'm at a loss. If anyone else is running IB TWS on a Nvidia GF4 with 2 monitors has noticed anything similar, please let me know. Sorry for the long post but I would appreciate any ideas for what could be causing this.
You may try a 'search' here on ET. I vaguely remember something similar recently where TWS on multiple monitors was maxing out the CPU for someone else. I think the solution was to move the TWS from one monitor to another. Maybe someone else remembers the thread and can help.