IB TWS pinkout craziness

Conflict between TWS and Quotetracker causing my "pinkouts":

I have found a conflict between Quotetracker and IB's Trader Work Station (TWS) that is causing my "pinkouts" and loss of TWS connections that have been occurring for the past month. When my Ameritrade account is shown in the "Quotetracker Trading Window" at the same time that TWS and QT are running on my PC, the connection of TWS to IB's servers are disconnected every 18 minutes for about 15 to 20 seconds for each event. These events occur throughout the day, all day, every day. It has taken me a month of studying this problem to figure out what is causing the problem. If I change to my MB trading account in the "Quotetracker Trading Window", the TWS disconnect problem does not exist. TWS and my IB account are not incorporated into QT in any way and my TWS is running independently from QT. My QT is not setup to receive any data from TWS. My QT is setup to receive data Ameritrade and MB Trading. Jerry Medved with Quotetracker does not think the problem is within QT and thinks it may be a bug within TWS.
 
Cat ... Did you do the QT updates lately?? There was one today. That might solve the problem. Good luck.

Edit. i had what might be the same problem last day or so. not as bad as yours, though.
 
Quote from rwk:

I think the reason they recommend standalone for slower connections is the length of time it takes to download the software. Once the software is loaded and running, the two version are virtually identical. I prefer the standalone version because I can control which release I am running. The browser-based version always runs the latest beta, and sometimes it is really buggy.
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Not quite correct.

The browser based is the latest one out of beta. But, because it is latest, it will still have post beta issues and bugs to resolve.

I also like to run a more mature version (so if 879 is the latest non-beta (880 is beta currently) then 878.x or earlier is my preference.

Only run the latest version of software if it has features or fixes that YOU need. IMHO :)
 
Again, I have to preface my questions by saying that I am new to this software:

1. Can you enter stock orders through the book trader? If so is there a place where you can change order quantity before you send out the order? Other than the default quantity? The video on this subject uses futures and hasn't been done well


2. Can you place an order through the Level II window? Can you click on a price level and have it populate the price box if there is one?

Tia.
 
I haven't opened an account here yet. Just trying to gauge how fast you can transmit orders. The TWS workstation seems too slow and cumbersome in that you have to fill out so many fields before you transmit an order.
 
Quote from akeyla:

I haven't opened an account here yet. Just trying to gauge how fast you can transmit orders. The TWS workstation seems too slow and cumbersome in that you have to fill out so many fields before you transmit an order.
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I don't agree but then again I don't scalp. There are also alternative front ends like ButtonTrader, etc. which give you a more flexible DOM window than the built-in BookTrader.
 
Quote from syswizard:

OK, but any reason you aren't running Javaw.exe (which effectively runs TWS) at REALTIME priority ?
Everyone seems to forget that running a REALTIME application at NORMAL priority is asking for trouble.
That's why most CD/DVD burning programs force their launch to REALTIME priority.
Also, if you don't use Win/XP, you are just BEGGING for trouble if it is not "tuned" i.e. many services shutdown and prevented from starting.
Finally, any complex anti-virus, or security program like Nortron Internet Security can absolutely CRUSH your system at any time when it does updates (which are unpredictable !).
My trading station runs Win2k, no security software (why would I need it ?), and the trading app runs at REALTIME priority.
The list of services running is about ONE FOURTH of the list that is running on my other WinXP Pro workstation used for research and communication.
Bottomline: WinXP sucks as an OS for trading...go back to Win2k or move up to Windows 2003 Server edition.
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Without wanting to be argumentative have to disagree with the priority stuff though the other advice is good.

Firstly priority only comes into effect when there is thread contention. Really that should be pretty much a non issue unless your PC is 10 years old or you play heavyweight games in the foreground. (or perhaps burn DVD's!).

Running a real time application on a pre-emptive multi tasking operating system is asking for trouble fullstop!! Fortunately neither JAVA or TWS are anywhere close to real time in there requirements. In fact with the latency of handshaking across the internet being many many many orders of magnitude slower shaving a few pico seconds of thread prioritisation is going to make imperceivable difference (if any). Thats the real kicker.

As you say raising the priority is unlikely to do harm, but it is likely to do harm rather than good if your PC is struggling along under CPU load. This is because the thread will start to contend for scheduling with critical OS threads hence old Bills warning.

Agree with all your other advice about running a clean lean machine. You can run a OS utility called MSCONFIG to disable some junk.

Cheers.

PS reasonable layguide to priorities here for thos interested http://www.pcanswers.co.uk/tutorials/default.asp?pagetypeid=2&articleid=35793&subsectionid=607
A link to the greatest real time operating system ever developed for nerds & ex nerds (like me) :D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSX-11
 
Quote from BlowFish:


Running a real time application on a pre-emptive multi tasking operating system is asking for trouble fullstop!!
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Indeed. A misbehaved application in a tight loop could easily lock a machine up hard. Many years have been spent in developing operating system schedulers. They should be left alone to do their work as designed.

Setting process priorities is fine. Setting real time is not.
 
Quote from dcraig:

Setting process priorities is fine. Setting real time is not.
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Baloney. Try it (instead of talk about it) and see.
If you are going to control your Windows environment effectively, get PriorityMaster.
An aside: talking about something this technical and esoteric is nonsense without the input of the Windows/XP kernel designer. Anybody know where he is ? I thought not. Why talk about it then ? It's all conjecture.
 
Quote from BlowFish:
. . . disagree with the priority stuff though the other advice is good. . .
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I don't understand this stuff, so I ran it by another trader who seems to have a handle on it. His feedback was about the same as BlowFish. My system seems to work o.k., so why fix it?

[rwk]
 
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