I have finally switched to WinXP Pro. I am not necessarilly thrilled by this new system. My new puter runs smoother than the old one under Win98SE, but that's what you should expect from a computer 4 times faster and equipped with almost twice as much RAM as the old one. Yet, I have already crashed WinXP Pro a few times with a program that does not crash Win98SE, so the so called stability of WinXP Pro is seriously overblown. Also, there is a bug in it that makes scheduling tasks harder than in Win98SE. I had to do some work around to get basic tasks scheduled. Now, I am not saying that everybody should switch back to Win98SE, all I mean is that if my old puter had as much RAM as the new one and the same processor it would be even better than the new computer with Win XP Pro. But what can you expect from a company that has no competition so can sell you anything pretending that it's better. It's different, but I will yet have to see that it's better. That's just a digression, anyway. Now, I used to use WakeUp, a little nice utility to keep my dial-up connection alive. It was working great, I could keep the connection as long as I desired. This little thing somehow does not work with WinXP and neither does some other utility of the same kind that I downloaded from the web. I don't know why, perhaps I am doing something wrong, but there is little room for that. I have changed my ISP too, perhaps this has something to do with this change, but I can't see how. I would therefore appreciate any information on this kind of utilities that actually work with WinXP. Also, under Windows 98SE IB TWS would automatically dial-up whenever it got disconnected. This does not happen under Windows XP, so perhaps I have yet to set everything correctly. But what exactly could I be missing, because I really do not recall any special set-up for Windows 98 to get TWS to redial when the connection is lost. Any advice here would be appreciated. TIA.
Don't know why you are using a dial up connection to trade. Is there no dsl or cable available where you are? I have also recently switched from win98 to xp. I have not had a single crash yet (almost 3 months). The computer I got came with a trial version of Norton Anti-Virus. It was about to expire, so I just bought Norton System Works ...$39 after rebates. Included is a utility to stay connected. I haven't used it since I connect through cable, but I would imagine it is more reliable than the little free programs you can download from the web. I know I had tried a few in the old days (like a year and a half ago) when I still had dial-up at home. They did not really do the job. Bottom line is you really need to spend the money to have the right connection. Or at least the right utility. I NEVER have traded from home. I would MUCH rather pay a little more in expenses and have a T-1 line, on sight tech support, backup systems, a trading desk I can call, etc. I understand that some traders trade from locations that may not have good internet access, and may not be in the proximity of a prop firm. But you can certainly at least get a utility to help you stay connected. The $39 I spent for the Norton suite is well worth the money to me, and I haven't even installed the "stay connected" program. Good luck, and invest wisely, Rs8.5
and your advice. You know, I am one of the greatest non-conformists that I have met in my life, so no wonder that I would rather tweak my Win98SE than buy XP because I had used Win NT in the past and had not found it that superior to Win 95. Same with the DSL, I have been so happy with my dial-up that have not considered any other options. The free utility that I used to keep my connection alive did such a good job that I had no reason to consider the DSL. I will still stay with my dial-up because another Globex crash is simply more likely than a failure of my dial-up connection once I finally get the right utility. And even if it fails, I use stops all the time, and so in the long run I am more likely to save by not subscribing to the DSL than to lose because I do not have it. Just my experience of many months on the dial-up. Of course, your experience can be different, but why should I change things that really worked for me. Except for a hassle I might not get that much for that. I switched to Win XP only to be able to run some new programs, but now I see that I have had to pay the price by being unable to run some other ones. Thanks again.
I use dial-up as there is nothing else available. I don't usually have a connection failure or get dropped for excessive idles but I have my Outlook Express always open and set to check for mail every 60 seconds. Works flawlessly to keep traffic running. There is also a setting in Dial-up Networking where you can set it to redial immediately if the connection is lost. Check it out. This is on 2Kpro. I don't understand your comparison of NT to win 95. I had both and found NT far superior. Never a blue screen in 3 years. I still prefer it to 2000 but , like you, had to upgrade to run other stuff.
Thanks for your advice. Now, my Win95 was tweaked by me and so was very stable almost as NT and yet consuming less resources. I would use it at home, but at work I would use NT that was a big resources hog, although it was still stable. You could run many programs at once with no problems. I was suprised to get WinXP Pro crashed within not even a week of using it by a program that does not crash Win98SE, although it would not run either. It just does nothing, only displays some error message that you can close, but the system is stable. WinXP gets frozen and I have to restart the computer manually. WinXP gets its roots in NT, Windows98 is an improvement upon Windows95.
There is indeed a very similar thing in WinXP, I just noticed it. You can set up the idle time before the system disconnects you. I am setting it up to 4 hours, let's see if it will work. Thanks for that tip.