How to change NT8 UerDataDir as it is point to incorrect OneDrive directory.

[demarcog]

HI,

I have another ticket open: 3005427 and sent the logs and trace files to Jesse. Not sure if this should be a separate or combined with that tickeet.

I spend with NT support we had to reinstall and practically by hand copy over every component due to OneDrive .

I noticed in the trace:

021-03-11 10:27:48:012 InstallDir='C:\Program Files (x86)\NinjaTrader 8\'
2021-03-11 10:27:48:012 UserDataDir='C:\Users\demarcog\OneDrive\Glens Onedrive\NinjaTrader 8\'
2021-03-11 10:27:48:012 MachineID='3A08756C78F09B000D24EAB497F808F4'
2021-03-11 10:27:48:012 OS='Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.19041.0'/'Win32NT'
2021-03-11 10:27:48:012 OSLanguage='en-US'
2021-03-11 10:27:48:012 OSEnvironment='64bit'
2021-03-11 10:27:48:012 Processors=8


What appears to bee happening is after reinstalling NT8 this UserData forced NT8 to use the OneDrive directories and the names appear as if they would if they were on OneDrive but are all local to C;

I'm updating strategies and other components of NT8 and have no idea what's going on and what set of NT8 libraries am should be using.

Is this a NT8 setting or picked up from the registry because if it's NT8 only I would like to try changing it to the right directories because this is third day I have not been able to trade the first few hours as that's how long it takes to get NT8 to come up. At times it hangs forever, at times is will come up after 30 minutes as I'm waiting for my charts to load now.

After a number of retries one time NT8 comes up normally taking a few minutes and it's fine for the day.

It's been 30 minutes and the charts are not loading and there is no Control Central window open I have to task manager shut it down.

Thank you

[NinjaTrader_Clayton]

Hello demarcog,

Thank you for the note.

Depending on how One Drive was stopped/removed from your PC, it could have left behind some unwanted things.

Start by making a backup file of your platform before you start the process below as it will be needed so you do not have to manually move files later.

• Disconnect from all active connections then go to the Control Center > Tools > Export > Backup file > Check all of the boxes except 'Historical data' and 'Log and trace files' to reduce the size of this backup > Click Export > This will be saved to the Documents/NinjaTrader 8 Backup folder

When removing One Drive from the PC, if you signed into One Drive and it made its changes, removing One Drive takes a few extra steps.

• You essentially have to install One Drive > Sign into your One Drive again > Go into the One Drive Settings > Manage backup > Tell One Drive to stop backing up the Documents folder
• At this point, it will move all of the files within the local Documents folder to the One Drive > Documents folder. I suggest copy and pasting everything back into your local Documents folder
• You will now need to do a full reinstallation of the NinjaTrader 8 platform to get it to let go of the One Drive location
  • Go to the Windows Control Panel and Uninstall NinjaTrader 8
  • Go to the Documents folder and rename the 'NinjaTrader 8' folder to 'NinjaTrader 8 Old'
    • We rename things instead of deleting them because this allows us to go back in later and pull things out manually if we need to
  • Reinstall the NinjaTrader platform, you may use the link below to download the platform by entering your email > Submit > click the Download button
    • https://ninjatrader.com/
• Once you are done installing the platform, open the platform and skip past all of the 'first start' windows and then go to the Control Center > Tools > Import > Backup file
• Import the backup file you made at the beginning of the process from the Documents > NinjaTrader 8 Backup folder or wherever you saved it
• It may remove your connection information and license key if this process has resulted in a new Machine ID and you will need to recreate/re-enter those

After performing the process above, all of your files will exist in the directories and folders intended.

[demarcog]

Hi Clayton,

Appreciate the response, this OneDrive seems to have 9 lives. Before I go through the slightly nerve wracking procedure as last time OneDrive crashed I could neither, install, uninstall, repair NT8 and the complete backup I took did restore but in the process wrecked my entire configuration because rather then overrwrite any common names it found in Strategies, Indicators, etc, etc it instead created new ones with my machine name appended to the strategy/indicator name and that as you can imagine took a day just to get rid of the compiler errors generated when Strat1.cs now had a Strat1_LAPTOP_EIN8677.cs sitting right next to it.

Not importing the backup would have been much easier as then I would have just been able to do straight copies from custom/bin/strategies.

I have a few questions. Where is that UserDataDir set in NT8 or windows and does it have to be corrected?

The other thing that is a little confusing for me is that even with OneDrive uninstalled I can login to www.onedrive.com and have access to all the files I copied to OneDrive.
I don't mind having the extra storage space from selective files I want to back up but need to turn off forever the use of backing up things to OneDrive.

I don't see where to tell OneDrive to stop backing up Documents to Onedrive. Do I need to have the complete OneDrive installed or can I just logon to www.onefrive.com.

At this point I don't even know where I'm running NT8 from he non OneDrive directories, the OneDrive named files on C drive or could the cause for the extensive delays starting is that Nt8 is actually running out of the real he OneDrive Cloud?

If the function of OneDrive was to simply backup the documents, it could do that transparently independently of where the source directory is, these Onedrive directories are loaded with real data that in some cases .

If I do a simple file search in File Manager specifying a wildcard filename in the search box in the upper right: *x.y.z*. I see it taking a long time and the blue progress line being drawn all the way across the top of the screen which in the past was an indication that the File Manager would searching the cloud OneDrives.

Glen

[NinjaTrader_Clayton]

Hello demarcog,

Thank you for the response.

For future knowledge/reference, the .nt8bk files that are exported when you backup the platform are technically compressed folders with a fancy name.

• If you 'Show file extensions' and rename the backup file to .zip instead of .nt8bk and select Yes, it is just a big compressed folder with all of the things you chose to export.
• You could then uncompress the folder and then manually copy over the files into their correct locations

When NinjaTrader is installed on a PC without One Drive involved, the pathway looks similar to this within the trace file:

• 2021-03-08 07:11:48:736 UserDataDir='C:\Users\CGibson\Documents\NinjaTrade r 8\'

I have had a previous experience where the user just deleted One Drive from their PC without going into the local settings for One Drive and stopping it first and this caused the User Data Directory to get stuck referencing a One Drive location that is not wanted, even after doing a fresh installation of the platform.

• The only way I was able to get the words One Drive out of the User Data Directory was to go through the process I mentioned before.
  • Reinstall One Drive on the PC, Sign in so you have access to the correct settings, then tell One Drive to stop backing up the Documents folder

In regard to the way that One Drive works and how you can still see various files, you will want to reach out to One Drive with these questions. The thing to remember is that while we are performing this process to have the NinjaTrader platform work as expected, we are not One Drive technicians and are not experts on that software. Our knowledge and documentation on One Drive only pertains to how we have to set up or modify things to have NinjaTrader work as expected. Anything beyond that is outside of our knowledge base and you will want to reach out directly to One Drive.

I will include the infographic I have made that details stopping One Drive from backing up the Documents folder:

• Before doing this process, create a backup file so that you can easily pull all of the folders and files back into their respective folders after performing the process as it will result in a fresh installation of NinjaTrader.
• https://www.screencast.com/t/2pKLiLVJm
• For security reasons, you may need to reenter your connections and License key if this has caused the Machine ID to change.

[demarcog]

Clayton,

I'm running into problems. I went through the 10 steps and got to the point of moving NinjaTrader 8 and everything else in the OneDrive to the c:\demarcog\dDocuments and no files will copy there is a red x associated the the directory and getting cloud timing out while copying and basically I cannot copy a file from one directory to another, that's a first for me.

Thought maybe I should uninstall OneDrive and that is worse can't even right click copy on the Ninja Trader 8 directory big ugly red box pops up saying not file is associated with the file (it's a directory) and explore.exe seems to have problems accessing.

Every time I try and access a file on the OneDrive directory the green status bar take a minute like its scanning and progresses across the top of the file explorer and essentially times out for each file I try and copy.

I'm thinking maybe I should reenable backing up that Documents folder in OneDrive to see if I could at least copy the OneDrive versions of these NT8 directories to the local Documents directory.

Now I see why NT8 is taking forever this OneDrive software is apparently getting hung up timing out accessing the files as if they were on a remote OneDrive drive and actually on my C drive.

The last thing I want to do is prevent NT8 from coming up.

Looks like my worst case scenario occurred neither NT8 will come up and many other applications are also not working. I couldn't update this forum post and gave up after 15 minutes of it hanging but it appears to be working.

I followed the instructions and all went well until I tried copying over Onedrive documents file to local c documents. When the Documents folder is taken out of the list of Onedrive folders to be backed. The directory gets flagged with a red X instead of the onedrive icon and it can't be open, copied, or even accesses, the green status bar on the top slowing grinds across the top of the screen and it times out isn't copied.

Now my problem is getting NT8 along with the rest of my system running. I'm attaching some of the screen shots I got, incorrect NT user id and password, and lots of other red error messages in log.

Any ideas would be appreciated as I lost a weeks worth or trading and hoping I won't have to spend a week rebuilding this system. I have lots of copies of the C drive on solid state but everything has to run through setup again, hundreds of applications and that's take a long time.

I attached a few of the error messages, plus some strange things, two Document Separate Document Directories under OneDrive and in one of the documents folders it looks lteh Documents directory was copied into the Documents directory.

[NinjaTrader_Clayton]

Hello demarcog,

Thank you for the response.

At this point, I would really like to see this in person so I may learn more about this situation specifically and do my best to make sure that we at least preserve a copy of all of your important NinjaTrader related files.

I will be able to lightly look into the file transfer situation in regard to NinjaTrader, but it sounds like you may have some things going on with the PC that are beyond NinjaTrader and you need a PC or Windows technician to help as we are trained on the NinjaTrader platform specifically.

Please use one of the following methods to send us your log and trace files so that we may analyze what is occurring with your PC and Platform specifically.

Automatically:
Within NinjaTrader, go to the Control Center > Help > Email Support...
Input your Email address
Enter the Subject as: Clayton ATTN 3008344
Attach any screenshots that could help demonstrate the behavior
Include any other information you would like to share on the situation
Make sure 'Log and Trace files' is checked to include the requested files
Send the email

Manually:
Open the file explorer and go to your "Documents" (sometimes called, "My Documents") folder
Open the NinjaTrader 7 (8) folder
Hold Ctrl on your keyboard and left-click the 'log' and 'trace' folders to highlight them both
Now, Right-click on the 'trace' folder and select Send To > Compressed (zipped) Folder
Once compressed, attach the compressed file in an email to PlatformSupport[AT]NinjaTrader[DOT]com with the respective @ and .
Once complete, you may delete this compressed folder

[demarcog]

Just sent it via the automatic way.

[demarcog]

Hi Clayton,

Thanks for all the help it looks like I'm back up and running from the correct c:\demarcog\Documents .

One stop that was a critical piece which I believe was mentioned was to unlink OneDrive:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-off-disable-or-uninstall-onedrive-f32a17ce-3336-40fe-9c38-6efb09f944b0

Thanks Again

Glen