While we're on the optic of configuration settings. I'm sure not only people with multiple accounts who need to keep identical settings across all accounts would most appreciate it if IB could finally add functionality that allows to export and import TWS configuration settings in an account independent format. Similarly functionality to export and load trading pages (ticker lists) from an external file should be provided.
Thanks for your post. It is a pain to keep IB "on the air" for me occasionally. I have a restart drill and I just take a financial hit once in a while. In the future, perhaps IB will be almost failure proof. I notice that when the market is relatively active, IB is less suitable for getting the job done.
This is why IB has trouble tracking the problem down because it in not occurring in test but only on customer machines due to it being file corruption, I answered the PM and gave IB my findings. If anyone can snag a *.lyt file they think is corrupt, send it to IB. File corruption happens fairly regularly. How often does someone say "I lost my pages or my hotkeys when I upgraded." That's file corruption. It can happen outside of the upgrade cycle as well. Sometimes the corruption generates so many Java exceptions (which soak up the CPU cycles availalbe to the JRE) that you get a constellation of symptoms which can generally be related to slowness: TWS opens to a grey, blank screen; quotes are late or dont exist; connection is dropped frequently; orders are processed slowly; re-logging in takes a long time. A good way to replicate this in test is to use a hex editor to 'corrupt' some *.lyt files are see what happens to TWS performance. Other solutions would be to convert *.lyt files to XML from the present binary format (like you did with the other config files). Another interesting thing to do would be to create a Java class which timestamps and monitors Java exceptions. If you get too many exceptions within a certain time period (if the app is just looping and throwing off exceptions like crazy), then this monitor class will alert the user and write something in the log and shut down TWS. A second cool thing would be to log exceptions related to the reading and processing of binary format local data files (the *.lyt files). Log these exceptions locally AND send them to the IB server, so that IB has a record of TWS errors to analyze which may be otherwise difficult to replicate in test.
I went in a trashed some *.lyt files with an editor, but TWS catches those exceptions and creates a default file. This is what happens when some of you say "I lost my pages when I upgraded." But there is a file corruption which doesn't trigger the default file to be written and is responsilbe for all types of TWS performance problems.
To give you an idea of the frequency of file corruption I had the problem in Jan and once in March and I use TWS every day. Not bad on an individual basis, but for a large group of users could cause numerous problems. Here's the real prob. Once you have the corruption problem, it will stay with you until you delete the file. Which is why you get these complaints like "My TWS never works, its always logging me off, its so slow, my quotes are behind (dont exist) etc..." Of course customer service can't find the problem because the problem is on the customer machine (file corruption) and can't be replicated in test. Anyone with THAT constellation of complaints (TWS opens to grey screen, quotes are slow (dont exist), keep getting logged off, re-logging in is slow( or takes many attempts), TWS response is slow, marketable orders are processed slowly) should wrap up their entire XML directory (the one that's C:\JTS\dwlcjwfzv) into a zip archive and send the whole thing to IB for investigation. But you could try to determine which specific file it is by switching them out with a pristine XML directory (delete the entire directory and TWS creates a clean one with default files on the next starup). Be sure to save your old XML directory because doing this will wipe out your pages.
I am still getting wrong quotes intermittently thru the course of the day...is anyone else suffering this?are some of you even aware its happening as if you do not have an alternative source for the data you may not be aware their is a problem.
It would be useful if people would specify which quotes they are talking about. There could be separate issues. For example, there's an ongoing problem with Nasdaq's new "SuperIntermarket" platform that has been causing ARCA to lock/cross itself and others.