The Tradebox Data Service is designed to be running any time the main Tradebox user interface (UI) is open. For details on how the data service works, and especially if you run Tradebox on more than one PC or with data held on a file server, you should familiarise yourself with our guide to the Data Service before proceeding.
This article contains troubleshooting steps if you find that the data service is hanging or stalling. These steps require Windows Administrator privileges; if you're not currently logged in as an admin, you should switch Windows users before continuing. If you're unsure of which accounts have admin rights, check with your local IT support.
Common causes and Solutions
Update Operating System and Reboot PC
As trite as this may sound (turn it off / turn it back on again), rebooting the PC often resolves a multitude of hidden issues that have accumulated in the operating system where it hasn't been updated or rebooted for some time. Before rebooting, on the PC, go to Settings > Windows Update > Check for Updates and ensure your operating system is up to date.
Update Tradebox
If you suspect you have an issue with the data service, you should first check you're on the latest build of our software and update as necessary. We release new versions containing bug fixes regularly and our support team won't troubleshoot individual instances of problems with the data service without first making sure you're on the latest build when they occur.
User Account Control
As part of its normal routine, the Tradebox data service will attempt to close and reopen itself after every service loop. Windows User Account Control (UAC) settings can get in the way of this. If you see prompts similar to the one below regularly while working on your PC, these are a symptom of high UAC and can get in the way of Tradebox's processes restarting.
To amend UAC settings, go to your Control Panel (Windows Key + R to get a Run dialog, type Control in the box and click OK) > User Accounts > Change User Account Control Settings.
Amend the UAC to its lowest/least intrusive setting and click OK. This may require a restart of your PC to take effect. You may wish to check with your system administrator before making these changes.
If the problem persists
Diagnosing when the service is hanging
Go to Logs in the main Tradebox One UI and check the timestamp of the last log line. If the data service is running as normal, you should see a log line at least every few minutes.
No new log lines in the last 20 minutes indicates that the data service has stalled.
This is the only consistent indicator we've found in working with Tradebox One. A Not Responding message, lack of activity in Task Manager, a progress bar that stops animating etc. do not reliably indicate a stall and we've seen various applications including our own return to normal operations from these states if given time.
Note – some processes communicating with the marketplaces do genuinely take a long time. An entry in the logs periodically such as ‘processing orders, please wait’ indicates the service is running as normal; in this instance no further action is needed, just wait for the process to complete.
Check the service PC and service interval
If the data service has stalled, you should first check the service PC to ensure you're troubleshooting on the right machine. In Configuration > Data Service.
The setting Run on this Machine should be ticked and the machine name should show as the one you're currently on.
If this setting is unticked and does not display a machine name, the service has not been set to run. Tick the box, save, and then close and restart Tradebox.
If the setting is unticked but displays a machine name other than the one you're currently using, you'd need to move to that PC before continuing.
You should also check the Process Every X Minutes setting. This indicates how often the data service should attempt to run. By default this is set to 1 minute.
If this is set to a longer interval, you will see no new log lines for the number of minutes set here in between data service loops and this does not indicate a problem with the software.
Check what the logs say
Click Logs in the top right of the main Tradebox UI. The Process log shows each task that the Tradebox data service attempts. Make a note of the last log line and what task it shows the data service was attempting prior to stalling; repeated failures on the same task should be raised to Tradebox Support who will investigate and treat as a bug if the behaviour is consistent and repeatable.
Make a note of the timestamp of the last line in the process log. Then go to the Issues tab. The bottom half of the screen contains synchronisation issues which tracks problems communicating with marketplaces and accounts packages. Is there an issues log line at the same timestamp (plus or minus 2 seconds) as the last line written to the process log? If so, this may also indicate a problem with a specific task.
Restarting the service & repeatable vs. intermittent problems
Your next step should be to restart the data service, following this guide.
You should then monitor your data service after restarting, by regularly checking the Logs screen in the main Tradebox One UI. If the data service stalls again on the same task (i.e. you see the same last lines in the process log or issues log prior to stalling), that's a repeatable problem. Finding the root cause and resolving it will depend on what task is causing the repeatable problem.
More often than not, problems with the data service are intermittent - i.e. it's not the same task prior to a stall, or it is the same task but doesn't occur on every attempt. Intermittent problems are almost always caused by a factor in the environment; after all, without installing an update or changing a setting, the data service isn't capable of attempting different behaviour on one cycle compared to another.
Ruling out environmental factors
Antivirus
Some Antivirus or security software can be overly cautious in preventing applications from launching or restarting themselves on your PC. Any antivirus can have conflicts with any software. While you're troubleshooting the problem, you should temporarily deactivate your AV or 'pause' protection; while we appreciate the need for software that protects your PC from threats, if you're having issues like the data service stalling when the antivirus is active and those aren't repeatable when it's disabled, it would point towards a conflict. Click here for details on adding exclusions.
Folder permissions
If Tradebox doesn't have permission to modify all the files in its data folder or program folder, you may run into issues including the data service stalling.
To find the folder locations, go to Support within the main Tradebox One program. The folders are listed on the left side of the screen under the Program Information heading.
The Program Folder should always be a local path starting with C:\ - contact Tradebox support if yours doesn't display this way.
The Data Folder may be a local path starting with a local drive letter (C: or D: would normally be local drives) or it may be a network path starting with \\ or a different drive letter such as E:\ or S:\
Folder permissions need to be set from the machine that hosts the drive containing the folder in question; having access to view the files across the network is not sufficient to amend the permissions. If you're in any doubt as to which machine you should be logged into before setting permissions, you should ask your local IT support or network administrator to complete this step as they should understand what the various paths on your network correspond to.
To amend permissions:
- Open the parent directories of the Program Folder and of the Data Folder.
If these are local paths in your Support page you can do this by clicking on the path, then clicking on the parent folder (the second-last directory in the path) within the address bar of File Explorer. If Tradebox uses a network path, find your Tradebox data via the local path on the machine holds the data; the parent directory is the folder one level 'up' from the data folder. - Make sure no Tradebox processes are running on this PC or any that point to it across a network. To end all Tradebox processes:
- Close Tradebox One.
- Close the Tradebox Data Service on the service PC by right-clicking the icon in the system tray and clicking Close Tradebox Data Service.
- Open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and end the Tradebox Application Service.
- Right-click on the parent directory of the Data Folder you opened in step 1 and choose Properties to view the folder attributes. The Tradebox data and program folders should not be read-only, nor should they be hidden. In the General tab, if Read-only is ticked or shaded, click the checkbox until it is completely clear to unset read-only, then click Apply. If Hidden is ticked, clear the checkbox, then click Apply.
If you've applied any changes and see a prompt like the one below, choose to apply changes to subfolders and their contents as well, then click OK.
- Still within the folder properties, go to the Security tab and click Edit to view and amend the folder permissions. Permissions and user groups can vary a lot from PC to PC and from network to network, so yours may not look exactly like these examples. Tradebox has several different processes, some of which are launched by users and some of which are launched automatically, and each of these may need to read, amend, create or delete files within the Tradebox folders. As a rule of thumb, you should make the Tradebox folders as open/unrestricted as possible by giving Full Control to any relevant users/user groups. On some versions of Windows, Full Control is termed Read/Write access.
As a minimum, we'd expect the CREATOR OWNER, SYSTEM, Administrators and Users user groups to appear in the top half of this screen. Click on a user group to display the folder permissions associated with it lower in the screen. Of those groups, System, Administrators and Users should all have full control. If any of them don't, tick the full control box in the lower portion of the screen and the other boxes should automatically tick. Click Apply.
Next, click Add to give permissions to another user group. In the 'Enter the object names to select' box, type everyone then click Check Names. Windows should amend that to Everyone. Click OK and you'll be back in the Permissions screen. Highlight the new Everyone user group and tick full control, then click Apply. Click OK to close the folder permissions screen and then OK to close the folder properties. - Repeat steps 3 and 4 on the parent directory of the Tradebox program folder, which you also opened in Step 1.
The default program folder path is C:\Program Files [Program Files (x86) if a 64-bit PC]\Tradebox\Tradebox, so you should go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Tradebox and apply the same permissions to the subfolder there, also called Tradebox. If you've installed to a custom path, you should apply the permissions to the folder containing Tradebox.exe and Tradebox_Service.exe.
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