I have been making my first attempts at creating expert advisors and modifying others. At first, everything worked fine (aside from any user error in the mq4s themselves, of course). But later in the day, all of a sudden none were usable within MT4 – they would be grayed out and nothing would happen when double-clicked. Turns out that the .ex4s are being erased when I start MT4.
I could still open older EAs. But if I then opened them in Metaeditor, and made any change whatsoever (even if I then CTRL-Zed to get it back to its initial state) and re-compiled, these would no longer work either, and similarly be deleted on MT4 start. Wtf is going on here?
Are there any good tutorials for doing the programming? I’m a programming newbie and it’s not exactly intuitive. I’ve been working with the one at metatrader.info, but could use more. Ebooks or real book recommendations as well.
I had the same thing happen to me once. Turns out MetaEditor was screwed up and corrupting the ex4 files when it compiled them. I reinstalled MT4 and it started working again.
As for programming tutorials, the MT4 language is based off the C++ programming language. If you learn C++ you’ve learned to program in MT4. I can’t recommend anything specific, but if you google C++ you’ll find tons of learning material.
Bah. Uninstalled Metatrader, deleted all the folders left after uninstallation, then reinstalled. Upon first start, it again deleted all the ex4s in the experts folder, including the ones installed with the program.
Guess I’ll try an older version of MT, though I don’t know why it initially worked all day until suddenly deciding to start doing this.
hey orpips base off c++ yes its mql4 tho i have a instruction manual for it if you still need it here… and unfortunately it wont attach if you send me a e-mail ill send it to you im <[email protected]>
Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’m going to get to use it. I just cannot get MT to work anymore. It absolutely will not let me use any EAs or Custom Indicators. All are greyed out and clicking them or dragging them to the chart does nothing. This despite the fact that everything was running fine for the first half-day or so. In the options screen I made sure EAs were enabled for different profiles/accounts just in case that was the problem.
I uninstalled MT, restarted the PC, deleted any remaining folders and reg entries, restarted again, then re-installed MT. Upon startup of MT, poof, immediately the ex4s in the Experts folder get deleted and none will run in MT, including the ones installed as default (Moving Average and MACD Sample). All Custom Indicator icons have a small circle or diamond in the lower right of the icon; I don’t know if that is simply to differentiate them from the regular indicators or whether it means they don’t work, but at any rate – they don’t work.
I suppose I’ll have to contact MT customer support; somehow there seems to be nothing in their knowledge base or forums about this and google doesn’t turn up anything relevant either.
It must be something very obvious I’m doing wrong. I downloaded the new build of MT4 (released on Nov 7) and installed it on a different computer, and have the same problem. All EAs are greyed out and neither they nor any of the custom indicators can be dragged onto a chart or double-clicked to open, and the Experts info tab and log shows “cannot load [whatever].ex4”, which is not surprising since all ex4s in the Experts folder are immediately deleted.
Could you perhaps post a screenshot? If you tried it on a different computer and had the same problem it has to be something you’re doing wrong but I can’t figure out what that could be…
What’s your OS? If you’re on a late-model Windows machine (2000 or above), you need to check whether or not you have administrator rights on your box. If you are not a local admin, your limited rights may prevent some parts of the app from working.
I ended up downloading and installing the version from Alpari and it works fine. I guess I was just having issues with the one direct from Metatrader themselves. Thanks all!
