Lessons learned with TS6 crashes

["Barry Silberman" <barry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To List;

Recently I had consistent problems with TS6 on a machine that was devoted to
TS6.   It ran windows 2000 pro, had 768 meg ram, and 933 pentium chip.

Errors consisted of ORchart crashes, Access Layer problems, couldn't read
memory issues, etc.   While my particular fix is not important, there were
several generic lessons I learned from talking with Tradestation engineers,
that may be of benefit to others:

1- after a crash, clear out following processes from Task Manager.   First
press control, alt, delete keys to bring up the Task Manager. Go
     to "Processes" tab, and highlight following processes and hit "end
process":
      a- any process starting with letters "OR", they include
            ORxcom.exe
            ORclproxy.exe
            ORcal.exe
            ORchart.exe
            ORDllhst.exe
            ORPlat.exe
            ORQA.exe
            ORelad.exe
        b- WHservers.exe
        c- GSW32.exe

             Some of the above will automatically close out on a crash, but
those that don't close out by themselves need to be ended before
             you restart the program.  It is preferable to do the above
instead of merely rebooting the machine.


2- Saving "cashe".  .Tradestation servers only save approximately 5 days of
tick data.  If the cashe was never corrupted, the cashe folder will
accumulate an "unlimited" number of days of tick data.   Unfortunaely,
"cashe" easily becomes corrupted when TS6 goes down, so it is important to
save "cashe" weekly.
        a- close Tradestation6
        b- click on My Computer
        c- click on C drive (or where ever TS6 is located)
        d- click on Program Files
        e- click on Tradestation
        f-  click on Program
        g- right click on Cashe and copy folder
        h- past to another drive and rename "Cashe-date"

        If cashe gets corrupted, you can just delete cashe from TS6 and
replace it with previously saved cashe and rename the saved
        "Cashe-date" file as "Cashe".  When you log onto TS6, the cashe will
be updated, and as long as you save the cashe weekly (as
         above) you will not lose the accumulated tick info.

3-  Save MyWork folder periodically to another drive.
        a- close Tradestation6
        b- click on My Computer
        c- click on C drive (or where ever TS6 is located)
        d- click on Program Files
        e- click on Tradestation
        f- right click on MyWork and copy folder
        g- past to another drive and rename "MyWork-date"

4- Export easylanguage files periodically to another drive.  With
Tradestation open, go to file and "Import/Export Easylanguage"

For whatever its worth, after replacing the video cards and mouse and still
getting errors, I had to replace 2 of 3 sticks of ram and do a clean install
of Windows 2000 Pro and Tradestation6 to fix my problems.   The ram was
guaranteed for I believe a year, so I just returned it for 2 new sticks at
no charge (http://www.crucial.com/).

Hope the above info was helpful.

Barry Silberman