Originally Posted by: lurker192

Stocks in my 'Favorites' groups take about two seconds each to load now, whereas 'Local Data' ones load instantly.  Could it be because I have about 80 different Favorites groups?  They were loading quickly until recently.

Hi, which version of MetaStock are you using?

Thank you,

It is possible the favorites file could have performance issues at certain sizes. Within the installation directory (typically C:\Program Files (x86)\Equis\MetaStock) there should be a Favorites.DTA file. How large is this file?

One thing you can try is making a Copy (backup) and Pasting/renaming it to something like Favorites.old. If you start up MetaStock while there is no Favorites.DTA file within the MetaStock directory, it will create a new (empty) Favorites.DTA. You could add your folders back and see if performance is improved.

The file did tend to inflate in size rather easily due to some of the items stored inside (exploration results, etc) so even after adding your folders back performance still may remain improved (for a time anyway). If you have a fairly elaborate set of Favorites lists, this might not make for a long-term fix, but it should at least help us troubleshoot the issue a bit. Unfortunately, the file was known to have performance issues if it got too large in size.

As a matter of reference, I had hardly anything in my Favorites.DTA (as far as lists I had created) and it was still around 2MB in size just from tracking scans, etc. that I had run.

If none of this helps you can move your backup of Favorites.DTA back into the MetaStock folder to get back to where you were.

The file could also get corrupted if MetaStock shut down unexpectedly while the file was in use, etc. If you end up re-creating your lists within a new (clean) Favorites.DTA you could make an immediate backup of the file so that you have it saved elsewhere in a clean state that you could always restore back to.

Edited by user Friday, November 9, 2018 3:50:09 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Originally Posted by: lurker192

Thanks Support for that. I tried deleting it and creating a new Favorites file but it was still just as slow. (The previous favorites.dta was 7.1Mb btw.) I've got the same problem both on my Desktop running Win 7 and my laptop running Win 8, both using MS 11. Also tried a file scan with Spybot but it reported no virus problems. Any other ideas that might fix this please?

There are a couple other DTA files that can build up over time but I wouldn't think they would affect performance like that. They are:

History.DTA (List of items you've opened, button on left side of File > Open)

Filehistory.DTA (Remembers symbols you type into File > Open)

These files will also recreate themselves when you re-open MetaStock. You could also try Tools > Test and Tools > Sort within The DownLoader to see if this might detect any problems in any of your local data folder(s). Since you mentioned the Local Data runs faster though, this seems less likely.

There are other list-related folders (COMMLIST, EQSLIST, EXPLORE folder) that store results. Deleting these deletes any "Lists" you may have created, including which folders you choose to download (not the folders themselves), but you could try moving them out of the MetaStock folder and restarting MetaStock to see if it changes the performance. EXPLORE folder contains all your previously-ran exploration reports.