NinjaTrader 6.5 - Windows 7 and SP1

D

DirkDigler

Don't upgrade to Windows 7 to SP1 if you plan on using/continuing to use NinjaTrader 6.5! It crashes instantly. I see a thread on their support which indicates there are no plans to support 6.5 and SP1. The only option is to use NT 7.0 which is still beta, great, just great. Every other piece of software I have works just fine on SP1. But NO not NT - NT is special!

I'm in for a marathon session tonight trying to make my code work with NT7. I really hate these guys by the way! This sucks!

OK - rant over. Just thought I might be able to save someone else some grief. Time to dive in to code I haven't touched in nearly a year. Uggggghhhhh...

For anyone considering NinjaTrader please take a good look at TradeLink first. Most excellent! http://tradelink.googlecode.com

- edit -

Looks like you can uninstall SP1

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/uninstall-sp1

Trying this now...
 
SP1 uninstall appears to have worked, NT is up and running again. I now get this when NT starts, just a few days too late.

attachment.php
 

Attachments

DirkDigler,

It is critical to us that we provide our user base with advanced notification of events that have material impact on their ability to use our software. With respect to NinjaTrader 6.5 and Windows 7 SP1, we issued a user notification early February that directed traders to the following webpage http://www.ninjatrader.com/SP1_Announcement.php. The image of the notification you posted is actually our second alert on this subject and the reason you received this alert now in NinjaTrader 7 is due to the fact that your installation is fresh and we queue last critical messages meaning, they are only dispersed of once a user confirms that they do not wish to receive this message. That being said, if you were using NinjaTrader 6.5 both alerts should have been displayed. The only plausible explanations I can think of is that either you overlooked these alerts or NinjaTrader did not show these alerts to you. On the latter, if you wish, I could have someone in our support team review your log and trace files to see if in fact these alerts made it to your system.
 
NinaTrader_Ray -

First off hate was a pretty strong word on my part, I was really quite pissed before I realized I could uninstall SP1. I'm still not real fond of NinjaTrader as it seems to need more 'care and feeding' than other software.

I can tell you with out any doubt that I did NOT receive an alert regarding Windows 7 and SP1. Unfortunately my livelihood is largely tied to NinjaTrader, as such I religiously read EVERY alert! Admittedly I had become lazy regarding reading the support forum regularly as things on my end had become mostly stable. I believe you missed one more plausible explanation, after a little investigation I'm quite sure I understand what's happening.

The fundamental problem with your 'event notification' implementation is that events are ONLY presented to the user upon NT execution but at no other time. Searching my log files I see that I last started NT on 1/30/11, and then on Sunday 3/6/11 I installed W7 SP1. In other words NT had been up and running continuously since Jan 30. (Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm assuming starting NT always logs "mm/dd/yyyy hr:min:sec AM|1|4|Verifying license at primary server..." when starting.)

I really didn't want to open this can of worms but I leave my systems on for various reasons, one of which is I have a relatively complex NT workspace spanning four monitors. It rarely loads correctly so when it does I avoid closing it if at all possible. Trying to resolve this with support team in the past was fruitless and a waste of time for me. Believe me I know good help is hard to find and retain. On a positive note - the fact that NT was up for 35 days is certainly a testament to its stability.

FWIW - I do see the log from the notification Sunday night. "3/6/2011 11:23:18 PM|2|4|Please read critical announcement at link below concerning Windows 7 SP1 and NinjaTrader." Again this was too late for me.

So no, I never saw your notification! Is there a way to get these notifications via email? Or some other method that does not depend upon NT launch?

Quote from NinjaTrader_Ray:

The image of the notification you posted is actually our second alert on this subject and the reason you received this alert now in NinjaTrader 7 is due to the fact that your installation is fresh...
More...
This is from NT 6.5, I didn't install NT7. I successfully uninstalled W7 SP1 and thus was not forced to use NT7 beta.

My lesson learned is to make it point to read the NT support forum regularly.

In my mind the question yet to be answered is regarding Windows 7 and Service Pack 1 why is the only solution the brain trust at NinjaTrader, the Architects of Electronic Trading Innovation I might add, giving its customers is beta software? But wait, I know the stock answer to questions such as these "I will forward your note to development team for future considerations. Please let me know if I may be of further assistance."
 
Quote from risky63:

like ray said.....they told you back in feb.
More...
Ah the joy of internet forums, no shortage of people willing to chime in with no understanding of the subject matter.
 
Quote from DirkDigler:

NinaTrader_Ray -

First off hate was a pretty strong word on my part, I was really quite pissed before I realized I could uninstall SP1. I'm still not real fond of NinjaTrader as it seems to need more 'care and feeding' than other software.

I can tell you with out any doubt that I did NOT receive an alert regarding Windows 7 and SP1. Unfortunately my livelihood is largely tied to NinjaTrader, as such I religiously read EVERY alert! Admittedly I had become lazy regarding reading the support forum regularly as things on my end had become mostly stable. I believe you missed one more plausible explanation, after a little investigation I'm quite sure I understand what's happening.

The fundamental problem with your 'event notification' implementation is that events are ONLY presented to the user upon NT execution but at no other time. Searching my log files I see that I last started NT on 1/30/11, and then on Sunday 3/6/11 I installed W7 SP1. In other words NT had been up and running continuously since Jan 30. (Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm assuming starting NT always logs "mm/dd/yyyy hr:min:sec AM|1|4|Verifying license at primary server..." when starting.)

I really didn't want to open this can of worms but I leave my systems on for various reasons, one of which is I have a relatively complex NT workspace spanning four monitors. It rarely loads correctly so when it does I avoid closing it if at all possible. Trying to resolve this with support team in the past was fruitless and a waste of time for me. Believe me I know good help is hard to find and retain. On a positive note - the fact that NT was up for 35 days is certainly a testament to its stability.

FWIW - I do see the log from the notification Sunday night. "3/6/2011 11:23:18 PM|2|4|Please read critical announcement at link below concerning Windows 7 SP1 and NinjaTrader." Again this was too late for me.

So no, I never saw your notification! Is there a way to get these notifications via email? Or some other method that does not depend upon NT launch?


This is from NT 6.5, I didn't install NT7. I successfully uninstalled W7 SP1 and thus was not forced to use NT7 beta.

My lesson learned is to make it point to read the NT support forum regularly.

In my mind the question yet to be answered is regarding Windows 7 and Service Pack 1 why is the only solution the brain trust at NinjaTrader, the Architects of Electronic Trading Innovation I might add, giving its customers is beta software? But wait, I know the stock answer to questions such as these "I will forward your note to development team for future considerations. Please let me know if I may be of further assistance."
More...

I noticed that my link in my first reply was corrupt with a period and did not work. You asked a question, why is it beta? Follow this link that includes an explanation of why it is beta.

http://www.ninjatrader.com/SP1_Announcement.php

Thanks for the explanation regarding the fact that you missed the product announcement. You are right. With 6.5, it only executed the notification on start up. Since you have been running it for without shut down for a long time you would never have gotten them. Understanding this gap, we did change NT7 to check for new notifications ever few minutes so you would never miss alerts anymore.

You make fun of the "canned" response in dealing with feature requests. In all sincerity, I am curious how you would suggest we handle them? At the end of the day, we can field 30 to 40 new requests per day. Its unreasonable for my support members to engage in dialogue on each request since they do not deal with product management. At the same time, I understand how our canned response comes across as a blow off...Which in fact it isn't, all requests do make it to a list that I personally use as guidance for future development.
 
Quote from NinjaTrader_Ray:

I noticed that my link in my first reply was corrupt with a period and did not work. You asked a question, why is it beta? Follow this link that includes an explanation of why it is beta.

http://www.ninjatrader.com/SP1_Announcement.php

Thanks for the explanation regarding the fact that you missed the product announcement. You are right. With 6.5, it only executed the notification on start up. Since you have been running it for without shut down for a long time you would never have gotten them. Understanding this gap, we did change NT7 to check for new notifications ever few minutes so you would never miss alerts anymore.

You make fun of the "canned" response in dealing with feature requests. In all sincerity, I am curious how you would suggest we handle them? At the end of the day, we can field 30 to 40 new requests per day. Its unreasonable for my support members to engage in dialogue on each request since they do not deal with product management. At the same time, I understand how our canned response comes across as a blow off...Which in fact it isn't, all requests do make it to a list that I personally use as guidance for future development.
More...
Thanks for the link, that actually does raise my comfort level substantially. I guess I was kind of beating around the bush. The question I'd love to see the answer to is why does W7 SP1 break NT 6.5? And more importantly why did you and/or the NT team choose to ignore W7 SP 1 as far as NT 6.5 goes? My guess is that it's not as a result of 'technical challenges' and more of a convenient way to coerce your user base on to the latest NT release. Again I know this challenge all too well. I'm sure you're connected with what's going on at Microsoft at least as MSDN subscribers or better so it's not likely you were surprised by the appearance of SP1.

From a human, 'touchy feely' standpoint there is at least one problem with your canned response. There is absolutely no way to know that anything actually came of the request. Ideally the response should be something like, "Your request has been assigned #1234 in our tracking system, you can check the status of your request on our request status page. Our development team meets every (day|week|month) to prioritize requests, etc." On that page would be a list of all user feature requests categorized in to one of three categories.
  1. Acknowledged (At least users know their request didn't go in the bit bucket. Granted it may sit in this state for a long time and may just fall off the list if not feasible etc.)
  2. Accepted (The team decided this was a good idea and will be implemented. Providing a target release is a bonus)
  3. In Progress (The request is being coded and will be in the next release)
I realize this is a pipe dream for many reasons, additional work load for one, it forces you to 'open your kimono' which is a little uncomfortable, you get the idea. I don't have an ideal solution for you. It just feels like an old couple that has been married for 30 years. Man, "The weather sure is nice outside." Woman, "that's nice." Man, "where should we go for dinner?" Woman, "That's nice." Man, "The house is on fire!" Woman, "That's nice."

Additionally it's one thing to provide that response to a feature request such as, "It'd be really neat if NT had a hotkey that would change the background color of all open charts to green". And quite another to provide that response to the question, "Do you have plans to make Ninja 6.5 work with win 7 SP1?". That's essentially what happened in this thread: http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/forum/showthread.php?t=38420 on 2/14/2011. In my mind that's not simply a feature request it's a known outage causing event to which the response really seems to be, "Yeah, whatever, we might think about that some time, but right now we have better things to do." Or in other words, "That's nice."
 
DirkDigler,

Thanks for taking the time to formulate a thoughtful response. Rest assured that I understand that canned responses provided at a high frequency does illicit the feeling of being ignored. This is a high priority issue for me which is why I solicited your feedback. I can assure you that all feature requests and suggestions are catalogued and reviewed on a consistent basis. I appreciate your ideas on how it can be improved and I expect that we will try and provide more transparency in the near future.

With respect to SP1, NinjaTrader and our 220+ 3rd party development partners rely on a 3rd party application for intellectual property protection. This vendor was not SP1 compliant many months ago forcing us to seek and implement an alternate vendor. The logistics with propagating this change (just for NinjaTrader 7) in a manner that had the least risk and impact to our partner and user base was overwhelming and delicate. Implementing this change to NinjaTrader 6.5 was more of a daunting task, coupled with the fact that 70% of our users have already migrated from 6.5 to 7 and that SP1 was not a forced Windows upgrade led me to decide to leave 6.5 in its current state. In short, deciding if 6.5 was going to SP1 compliant or not had consequences and I decided that not supporting it at this time was the lesser of two evils.
 
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