Freezes and crashes every single day and I'm sick of it

General Discussions
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Every single day I have multiple freezes/crashes/data not loading.charts stuck and it’s totally unaccetpable. I’m using the latest and it’s absolutely horrific. This is not professional software.

Today, a profit target hits and it causes the chart window to freeze, the entire window. I try to disconnect the account and then the control panel window freezes, then I have to restart, a process which takes 5 minutes because everything on this platform is so slow.

Screenshot 2026-08-19 155642
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This is happening multiple times a day, causes by mutliple things. It’s not like this is just one bug that I can nail down and repeat. The app crashes over a multitude of things and I’ve almost had enough. It’s like every release just gets more unstable ands takes more resources. Are they even bothering testing it anymore?

3 Likes
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That pattern is serious enough that I would stop using the current workspace for live orders until it is isolated. A target fill should not freeze both the chart and Control Center.

The fastest useful split is Safe Mode versus the current workspace:

  1. Start NinjaTrader in Safe Mode. Hold Ctrl while opening it and keep holding Ctrl until the Control Center appears.
  2. Connect only the data feed. Open one new chart with default bars, no template, and no custom indicator or AddOn. Test on Sim101, not the live account.
  3. If that stays stable, open the old workspace while still in Safe Mode. If the freeze returns, the workspace itself is the branch. If it does not, restart normally and add custom assemblies back one at a time.
  4. Right after the next freeze or crash, preserve the matching files from Documents\NinjaTrader 8\log and Documents\NinjaTrader 8\trace.

Send NinjaTrader support the exact platform version, connection adapter, instrument, order type, timestamp, workspace name, and whether only the chart froze or the Control Center stopped responding too. Include the log, trace, workspace and UI settings. That gives them one incident they can trace instead of a general stability report.

2 Likes
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Just to add to the body of evidence - your description sounds similar - related to order execution. On the previous upgrade I noticed that order execution caused the instrument’s chart to ‘pause’ whilst the order executed. I did a bit of testing to confirm it - exacerbate by replicating with multiple contracts. Roll back to prior Release, no problem. Totally replicable.

Tried to report it to Support. Usual waste of time, do a clean install (I.e. zero configuration, recreate your Connections, EVERYTHING from scratch - 20hrs maybe), no indicators (I only use one!). “No-one else is reporting this” - I stumbled upon Ninja Reddit - a Ninja vendor was having your problem: Orders crashing (mine doesn’t crash) and had written a script for his clients to try to capture the crash to get Ninja’s attention. I gave up on Support. Simply put, 2 Releases ago didn’t have the problem, next Release was not backward compatible to my setup. Current version seems to have same problem but worse.

Ninja’s Support & Development depts lost my goodwill a long time ago. Good luck

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Have you tried turning off all of the order-related sounds? There was an issue in a recent build that seemed to cause the sounds to crash the platform under some circumstances. Just a thought.

2 Likes
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Thanks for the suggestion Namesake. I don’t have any Order-related sounds enabled (deleted in the Settings path).

But I do agree/suspect it is to do with the Order/Sounds ‘mechanism’, I do recall the issue with the sounds folder you refer to. Problem simply doesn’t exist on previous release - whack on 50 contracts to execute & has no effect on chart, it carries on whilst orders execute (all on Sim of course)

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Well, if you go into options and disable all of your sounds completely, and it doesn’t happen anymore, then you’ll know. Yes, that bug was introduced just a build or two ago and before that it wasn’t a bug in that area.

2 Likes
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I also have a sound bug introduced in the version before last. Any indicators with sounds, when switching tabs, the sound file of historical bars plays all stuttered. Assume the sound file says “Sound”.

Then I will sometimes hear +“s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-sound” . This always wasn’t an issue in previous versions.

It doesn’t cause a crash but it’s crazily annoying.

1 Like
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Yes clearly a build or two ago there were some changes. The latest 8.1.8.0 release notes shows an Alert-related sound issue was fixed ; 8.1.7.0 introduced sound volume controls; 8.1.7.2 notes “Restored non-overlapping notification sounds when Play consecutively is disabled”. Clearly they’re working in this area, and have some debugging left to do in order to live down all of the intended improvements.

1 Like
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That happened to me too. Almost had a heart attack, thinking my order of one contract turned into 100.

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I tried to look at the .8 Release Notes before posting here - ‘Oops, page not found’ so didn’t bother downloading. 7.2 said Sounds fixed too :wink: (whilst concurrently Support says ‘nothing to see here….’) Snake in grass he speak with forked tongue. Back on 6.3 - no issues. #Ninjagarbage - ‘Twas ever thus

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The release notes are here: Release Notes > 8.1.8

1 Like
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yeah that’s been messy the last couple builds. i don’t keep live orders on the same box as the charts anymore. if desktop locks you’re just sitting there.

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Honestly, this sound bug is the worst thing of all. I have ‘play consecutively’ unchecked but sounds from indicators when switching tabs play in a suttured manner and it often last for 5-10 minutes on repeat.

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A few days ago I had an open position that I’d built up across various executions, I think I had a 6 target orders, which I had placed close to one another. The market swipes up and takes out all my targets in one swift move, but the fills occurred with a delay - it seemed like they were going through one at a time.

Feels like a threading issue - where multiple sequential OrderUpdate or ExecutionUpdate events are holding a lock somewhere and only allowing one to process at a time.

Mine hasn’t crashed, but I have noticed the order issue and I am also seeing bad performance on 8.1.8.2 - when volatility picks up my chart bars rendering lags behind the market, so will probably roll back.

Sometimes Ninjatrader releases are bad sometimes they’re fine. This is definitely a bad one.

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“Feels like a threading issue - where multiple sequential OrderUpdate or ExecutionUpdate events are holding a lock somewhere and only allowing one to process at a time.”

Yes, this is exactly how it behaved for me. Whether or not it is the Sounds bug which is interfering with order execution I cannot tell, but, as I don’t have any order-related sound alerts set up it is NOT the playing of the sound files, consecutive s-s-s-s stuttering etc because it is not playing any sound files at all. It could be ‘related’ to ‘trying to’ (the mechanism) but I’m tending toward this being coincidental and a red-herring.

Whether or not order execution has always been sequential or not, again I’ve no idea (I know tick processing is sequential, always has been and isn’t distributed across threads) but whether or not or the cause, the point is in 6.3 and earlier it was imperceptible regardless of number of executions, and since .7 it is far from it

I’ve been back on 6.3 for a week and the issue simply does not exist. Order execution is instantaneous, can be viewed through several routes such as Control Center etc. Hence I would tend toward a ‘threading issue’ (I know little about such things, but it seems there is a ‘connection’ between chart and order execution which isn’t present, or at least not apparent/perceptible, in previous Releases. However, whilst I don’t use Chart Trader, I do recall playing with it when first released and found similar - using it would slow the charts, so I didn’t. Same when they introduced Alerts and indicators on the DOM.

But, official Ninja response: nothing to see here……

I had a Support call remote-in a couple of weeks ago (Cynthia) in an attempt to articulate this and also demonstrate it to them comparing version against version. Complete waste of my time, typical Ninja arrogance, ignorance & I have to say, rudeness - do as we say and only as we say (no matter that it wastes my time), we’re not interested in anything you have to say & if not, the call is over. With a follow-up email telling me they’d fixed my problem by re-installing fresh (which of course they hadn’t and couldn’t know whether had or hadn’t as didn’t TEST the problem, just did a clean install & that’s it, we’ve fixed your problem) & no-one has the problem I report (untrue -here on their own Forum, Reddit, Vendors etc). Of course this issue won’t be ‘apparent’ to the majority of users. However it may be costing them.

No idea if further .8 patch may have fixed it but nothing further in Release Notes to suggest so. But if they won’t acknowledge it, it’s unlikely!

Rant over

Kind regards,

1 Like
17

Me too. My system crashes or freezes several times a day, even though I generally trade just a few hours. When it just freezes, sometimes the DOM keeps running. Other than that, I really love NinjaTrader.

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One detail that might help narrow this down is whether the UI is actually freezing, or if order/data processing keeps running underneath it while the chart just stops updating. PhilT’s note that the DOM sometimes keeps ticking while other windows lock up is a pretty useful clue in that direction.

If anyone can reproduce this reliably, it’d be worth capturing the exact state at the moment it happens — NT version, whether Chart Trader is on, how many executions/targets are open at once, and whether the DOM/Control Center are still responding while the chart is frozen. Matching that against the log/trace timestamp would help separate a UI-thread lockup from an actual data/processing stall.

Might also be worth running the same execution sequence on Sim with a bare workspace and comparing against the normal one — if the DOM/data keeps moving while only the chart hangs, that points somewhere pretty different than a full platform stall. Given how version-dependent this seems to be for people here, something like that side-by-side might narrow it down faster than treating each freeze as its own one-off.

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Yep, already done all of that down to a barebones clean install (not Update, so new Connections, no pre-existing Workspaces, no 3rd-party indicators even installed let alone used - nothing, totally naked new install).

1 bare chart, no indicators, just a data series, and a DOM. And it does what I and KevinEnergy reported (stack a bunch of executions at the same price, watch them sequentially execute in Control Center).

Not noticable with one contract (because there is no sequential order processing). Individual order execution may be slower than 8.6.3, I don’t know, can’t tell. Stacking orders at the same price magnifies/exacerbates the execution issue. Adding indicators or anything else anywhere simply magnifies/exacerbates this core platform order execution problem, they, & the UI in and of themselves are not the cause. Not so on 8.6.3

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In the old forum there was a thread (by b.j.d.) documenting onrender contending with chart trader (visible or not).

NT8 Performance problem around Excessive OnRender calls.

03-07-2025, 02:25 AM

I have recently dug deep into some of the performance problems I have seen with NT8 and I'm curious if others experience this as well. In particular, ON my PC I have noticed that high drawings counts or orders can cause extra lag and in some cases charts hang for a few seconds.

What I believe I have identified is that there may be excess "synchronously forced" calls to OnRender across the system. Particularly around the position/order labels in ChartTrader mode may be causing excessive OnRender calls. Given that these forced calls to OnRender for every single indicator, every single drawing object across all the charts that have ChartTrader enabled (On or Hidden mode), and the calls are multiplied by the number of orders and for each order it appears to trigger for every OnOrderUpdate, the problem can grow exponentially if you have partial fills or scale into your positions in a way that creates new stop/target orders for example. e.g. the math:

OnRenderCalls = Orders * 3 * (DrawingObjects + Indicators) (*2 if Stop and Target are being affected a same time) [and this is happens in all ChartTrader charts]

I am curious if others see this kind of performance issue and/or if it's just so noticeable on my PC, while powerful is a few years old now. My charts "Hang" for a number of seconds around order movement, creation, canceling, fills, closing, etc. I do have some Indicators that I know are compute intensive, drawing shaded regions and such, but I have tried to develop them to be as efficient as possible. WIth that said, I've been able to duplicate this lag in SafeMode by just adding a handful of drawings and increasing the Order count to exacerbate the issue.

I have enclosed a custom indicator that displays some metrics around OnRender calls and "High bursts of Request per second". If you have encountered some of these issues, I encourage you to try this Indicator. Add it to a chart with ChartTrader on, and another window with ChartTrader off so you can see the total difference in OnRender calls over time. To test it at the extreme corner cases you can for example create some positions with an ATM 1 contract at a time, so you end up with multiple stop/target orders and then move the orders around, or watch as they trail the price to see if the RPS burst. Keep in mind that these stats are just the OnRender calls to the Debug Indicator, so this would be multiplied by the number of Drawing Objects and Indicators across your charts.

A sample of the statistics displayed (extreme case):

ADebug_OrdersExcessiveOnRender.cs

lol, I see you were party to that thread:

“charts "Hang" for a number of seconds around order movement, creation, canceling, fills, closing, etc. I do have some Indicators that I know are compute intensive, drawing shaded regions and such,​“

I have multiple shaded regions but otherwise compute- & render-lite & mostly lag-free

I ventured to replace DOMs with Chart Trader. Result was same effects as your experience. Same workspace: DOMs- no lag; Chart Trader- lags. Simply put, using Chart Trader in direct replacement of DOMs (I.e. zero other changes) is more resource intensive and overloads my pc’s computational capability. ‘Despite’ drawing shaded regions, Levels etc using indicators, Chart Trader has an impact on performance far greater than those other activities.

Seems to tally with your experiences.

1 Like
21

Sounds version-specific. If 8.6.3 works fine on the same bare setup, newer builds likely changed order-processing behavior.