Strategy Builder freezing up

[JohnS52]

Hello - Lately I press the add button in Conditions and it takes about 5 minutes for the window to open. What could be causing this? Do I have too many strategies in my Strategy folder? Is it the Database? Cache?

I have a fairly fast computer with 6 cores and 12 threads. I have only 4 charts open with 2-3 light-weight indicators on each chart, e.g. no Order Flow.

Second question which may be related to the first - I right clicked in NinjaScript Editor, turned on Warnings and was surprised by how many warnings showed up. Do I need to deal with those, one by one? Could the long list of warnings be effecting the Strategy Builder?

[NinjaTrader_Emily]

Hello JohnS52,

Thank you for your post.

What version of NinjaTrader 8 are you using? This may be found by going to Control Center > Help > About. As a test, please right-click the NinjaScript Editor and uncheck Show Warnings. Next, try and add a new condition in the Strategy Builder and see if the time to open the conditions window is improved or the same.

In regard to the warnings, the NinjaScript Editor ignores warnings by default. Some warnings can be expected to come up, and these are similar to the warnings you might see in Visual Studio while working on a project. As long as your code compiles successfully, you should not need to take any action to deal with the warnings specifically. If you would like us to review any of the warnings, please provide a screenshot example demonstrating the types of messages you are seeing.

• To send a screenshot with Windows 10 or newer I would recommend using the Windows Snipping Tool.
  • Click here for instructions
• Alternatively to send a screenshot press Alt + PRINT SCREEN to take a screenshot of the selected window. Then go to Start--> Accessories--> Paint, and press CTRL + V to paste the image. Lastly, save it as a jpeg file and upload the file as an attachment in your reply post.
  • Click here for detailed instruction

I look forward to your reply with the results of the test.

[JohnS52]

Hello Emily,

I have 8.0.26.0. I restart Win10 and NT8 daily. Today I turned off Warnings in NSE and timed the time-to-open of the Add button in SB at 2 minutes 57 seconds just after 4:00 pm.. In the past it might hesitate during a high volume time of the day for 10 seconds or so but this is extreme. It was working fine up until 2-3 days ago. Any thoughts?

I won't worry about the warnings for now. Many of them are for Lizard ama Indicators.

Thanks for all you do.

[NinjaTrader_Emily]

Hello John S52,

Thank you for your reply.

First, I see that you're using an older version of NinjaTrader 8. To update NinjaTrader, please follow the steps below:

• First, copy your license key from NinjaTrader under Help> License Key then exit NinjaTrader
• Click on the link: https://ninjatrader.com/PlatformDirect
• Enter your license key and press Submit
• Select 'Download'
• Critical: Before running the installer, ensure NinjaTrader is closed.

Next, as a test, please try isolating the strategy you are working on in a clean environment with the following steps:

• Export the script you are working on by going to Control Center > Tools > Export > NinjaScript AddOn
• Shut down NinjaTrader
• Navigate to the Documents folder on your PC and rename the 'NinjaTrader 8' folder to 'NinjaTrader 8 temp'
• Open Control Panel > Programs and Features > Uninstall or change a program
• Right-click on NinjaTrader 8 and select "Repair"
  • This will create a new 'NinjaTrader 8' folder in your Documents using the install file you downloaded to update NinjaTrader
• Launch NinjaTrader
• Go to Control Center > Tools > Import > NinjaScript AddOn and select the file you previously exported
• Open the Strategy Builder for that strategy and try to load the conditions window in this clean environment
  • Please report back the results of how long this window takes to load in this installation

To get back to your regular NinjaTrader 8 folder with all of your other custom items, please follow these steps:

• Shut down NinjaTrader
• Navigate to the Documents folder on your PC
  • Rename the 'NinjaTrader 8' folder to 'NinjaTrader 8 TEST' (please keep this folder in case we need to perform additional steps with this setup)
  • Change the name of 'NinjaTrader 8 temp' back to 'NinjaTrader 8'
  • Launch NinjaTrader and you should have your custom indicators, workspaces, templates, etc as before

Based on the results of this test, we will be able to identify the next steps and narrow down the potential cause of the slowdown.

I look forward to your reply.

[JohnS52]

Hello Emily,

I installed NT8 8.0.26.1 then tested the Strategy Builder with 5 different strategies on Saturday. They all had about a 2 minute 53 second delay with the Add button in Conditions & Actions. Note the Add button in Inputs & Variables had almost no delay at all.

Thank you for your procedure: I followed it, did the imports, opened the Strategy Builder and retested. All were fine.

I saved the TEST folder and reset the NT8_temp back to what it was before. So now I'm back with a Strategy Builder that doesn't work so well. I don't know what I did that has made it act this way but I may not need the SB any more. In other words, I guess I can live with it malfunctioning if it's not a sign of a deeper problem.

Any further thoughts?

[NinjaTrader_Emily]

Hello JohnS52,

Thank you for your reply.

Since you were able to test by importing a few strategies into a clean environment and the loading time was fine, that tells us that the strategies you tested are likely not the culprit for the slowdown. Other potential causes for this behavior could be having a lot of indicators, especially any indicators that have a lot of code in State.SetDefaults. You could run additional tests by importing indicators into your new "TEST" environment one at a time to see if at a certain point the Strategy Builder starts to slow down when opening the conditions window again. This would signal that the cause is one or more indicators that have been imported and you can try removing them from your main installation to see if the behavior improves.

Otherwise, I recommend removing any indicators/strategies you are no longer using to see if this helps improve the performance. Custom NinjaScripts can be removed in one of two ways from within NinjaTrader 8:

• Add-ons can come as packages called 'assemblies'. An assembly can be removed by going to Tools > Remove NinjaScript Assembly > Select the assembly you wish to remove > Remove.
• To remove NinjaScript individually you can go to New > NinjaScript Editor > Double click on the 'Indicators' (or the relevant) folder > Right click on the add-on you wish to remove and select 'Remove'. Repeat these steps for all add-ons you wish to remove.

I appreciate your patience. Please let me know if I may be of further assistance.

[JohnS52]

Hello Emily,

Thank you for the advice.

One more bit of information - when the Add button finally opens Log shows 4 indicators with problems. I will start with those.