There has to be something peculiarly wrong with either your configuration or your isp/telco provider. I have this thing running at two disparate geographical locations and there has not been a single problem along the lines that you describe.
Traders all over the nation are having trouble with IB several times a day.... ...just got their notice that listed stocks begining with D-H are unavailable beween the hours of 2-3PM on odds days, and R-Z are unavailable on Fridays and Wednesdays, and the system will be down at random times for blocks of no shorter than 10 minutes throughout the day for the rest of your life....
The bid and ask in TWS for ES and NQ are stuck and only the last is changing. Now, tell me that this is my connection problem. Perhaps my computer problem, but everything else is working just fine. Now we are having for ES (and being so for at least 10 min) : 1073.25 vs 1073.5 and the last is 1071.75. Weird!
This keeps going on. The size of bid and ask are stuck too. BTW, the YM data is behaving OK, so how is this a connection problem? It would be if all data were affected and not only some. It might be a problem between Globex and IB but not between me and IB. And if this is my computer problem than it is a very unusual one. I did not have problems like that under Windows 98, Windows XP Pro is supposed to be even more stable. That's very weird indeed. I think the problem is with IB's TWS. It's not very stable. It can act weird. And it does. Last time it did something weird it was to my PL that went totally out of whack. Now the quotes.
Since it worked under 98 but not XP I was wondering what version of Java do you have installed? Go to this test page and find out your Java version. http://www.java.com/en/download/help/testvm.jsp Then tell me what you have.
1.4.2_02, as far as I remember the same I was using under Windows 98 last time around (or at least it was 1.4), switched to XP pretty lately.