MetaTrader 4 Build 735 Common Errors
It's currently Sunday night UK time, so we've just restarted a variety of flavours of MetaTrader 4 on one of our virtual private servers. They've all automatically updated themselves from version 4.00 build 711 (27 Sep 2014) to the shiny new build 735 (17 Oct 2014), and they've all stopped working! Here's a screenshot showing the symptoms of the problem:
MT4 build 735 fails to connect. It's a "Common error"!
That was using a freshly created GKFX demo account, but exactly the same thing occurred on long standing live accounts from Alpari, Armada and LMAX as well as GKFX. As you can see, the latest build of MT4 fails to connect to any of those brokers. There's no helpful debugging information in the logs, and the only explanation is the "Common error" message proudly displayed in the bottom right hand corner of the main terminal window. The problem isn't confined to a single broker, and it occurs even on a fresh install so it's nothing to do with all our weird and wonderful indicators and expert advisors. What could be the cause? After a bit of head scratching the thought occurred to me that this particular VPS is still running Windows Server 2003, so I tried the same experiment on Server 2008. Lo and behold everything burst into life, so it looks like the ancient operating system is part of the problem!
However the markets are already open and getting a variety of EAs up and running with a variety of brokers before bedtime on a new VPS running Server 2008 wasn't really realistic. After a bit more head scratching, and more in hope than expectation, I replaced the build 735 versions of terminal.exe and metaeditor.exe on my fresh install with those two files from MetaTrader 4 build 670. Lo and behold everything burst back into life when I restarted MetaTrader! A bit more cutting and pasting and all our "robots" were happily talking to their respective brokers long before midnight.
That's all well and good, but it doesn't actually explain the underlying cause of the problem. We'll keep you posted if we discover anything further, especially if build 735 can be persuaded to function on ancient versions of Windows with a smaller footprint than the current monstrosities.
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Comments on MetaTrader 4 Build 735 Common Errors
According to the MQL4 forum other people have experienced similar problems using Windows XP, and it seems that MetaQuotes have created a build 736 which provides a fix.
I've now manually overwritten all my hastily created 670 builds with the new executables (now up to build 737), and everything still appears to be working as it should. What with one thing and another I don't think I'll be rushing to try out MetaQuotes' new "virtual hosting" service though!
MetaQuotes have announced this morning that:
The first in their list of bug fixes reads as follows:
Hopefully that will also fix the error that (in my experience at least) ALWAYS prevented launching the client terminal under Windows Server 2003!
build 745 released 24/10/2014 should fix this error, in the meantime there is a manual fix: https://www.copy.com/s/q6x7HIbyo1f4aEJ9/terminal.zip
build version 736. Backup and replace terminal.exe and metaeditor.exe in the target directory and run, after a delay to update – everything working again 🙂
@Tim: Armada have now sent me build 737, which also solves the problem with Server 2003 for me. That's downloadable from the link in my first comment above.
None of this solves the underlying problem however, which is that forcing updates on people without allowing them to run tests in their own environment first is not a good idea. Not being able to (quickly and easily) revert to a known working state when something goes wrong is even worse!