I use the latest TWS stand-alone workstation with Bracket Trader. I also run Metastock RT for my charts and analysis at the same time. TWS has has always had intermitent lockups. Sometimes quotes would just stop for a few seconds and sometimes TWS said it was re-establishing the login. This would happen several times hourly all day, every day. This has been driving me nuts since TWS won't accept orders if quotes are locked and I've missed many, many trades. I've talked to IB support who says it is either my ISP (roadrunner cable) or my computer firewall. I knew it was neither since I did much testing of my connections and computer. I had given up hope that the problem would be solved with this version of TWS and anxiously hoped for an update. This morning, to my surprise, when I started TWS I received a warning that I hadn't been using the "charting" feature and asked if I wanted it disabled. It was already not checked and I had no plans to use TWS charting so I said OK to the message. Afterwards, today turned out to be the first day quotes and connectivity worked perfectly all day. Gone were the intermitent lockups that had been plaguing me. I don't know if there is a way to manually disable the TWS charting feature but if you're experiencing the same problem as I, ask IB support how to disable the charting feature.
You can find that in the "Feature Selector" - turn off anything you want. Its been an option for quite a long time now. By the way, I kinda doubt that one had anything to do with the other. Probably just a wierd coincidence.
It was already turned off in the feature section. I think disabling it must be a further step. On second look, maybe you are correct. Although, I'm sure the box was unchecked next to charting when it presented the offer to disable that feature.