Need Some Technical Advise with MT4

I had a power surge due to lightning storm. When I reactivated an MT4 chart only the outline of the chart platform is present. The outline shows the File, View Tools & Help categories at the top, but no chart is present. In the bottom right-hand corner of the chart, it is reading 303/0 kb. I there anything I can do to prompt the return of the charts as I had them before the surge? Thank you for your help to anyone responding.

Any saved profiles or templates ?

Or worse case you could try a re-install of the platform over the same file directory.

Hi Shabs,
I will try the re-install. Thank you for your response. Best of Pips to you my friend.

I suspect a reinstall of MT4 may be necessary, as Shabs19 suggested. (I would first copy your profiles folder before doing that; see below). However, more details...

If you have MT4 open, File->Open Data Folder
Then quit MT4, because this finishes writing everything into the log files.

Then check the most recent log file(s), which can be either under: \...\your_MT4_top_folder\logs\ e.g. 20220318.log
... and/or you can check in the Open Data Folder window, go to MQL4\Logs\ and look for the recent file.

Are there any error or warning messages there?

The following suggested steps I have *not* done personally, so I'm making some guesses, but if I were stuck, it's where I'd start. My guess is you have either a corrupted profile that you need to fix, and/or one or more chart files is corrupted. It is too hard for me to guess what would be every step you need to take, and I don't really know what will work for certain, so apart from these ideas, you're on your own.

Go into your "\profiles" folder which is either parallel to your MQL4 folder (in the Open Data Folder), or if not, it would be under your installation folder.

View the list of files/folders with "Details", so you can see the file/folder names along with the modified dates.
Sort by the "Date Modified".

Do you see the most recently modified profile folder? This is probably the one you were using.
I would start by selecting that one folder, then Ctrl+C (Copy), then Ctrl+V (Paste) just to make a backup copy of it.

Then go into the original folder.

Each chart has a name like "chart01.chr", "chart02.chr", and so on. How many charts do you have?

Since my first guess is that the profile is corrupted, I would start MT4, and create a new profile. Probably a blank one is fine. Then open up the same number of charts as was in your problem profile (EDIT: Opening the same number of charts appears not to be necessary, because just adding the chart##.chr files into the profile folder, then opening MT4 of that profile shows tabs for all the charts you just added).

I assume that a new profile with one or more new charts will appear as normal, but if not, your MT4 is hosed and you must re-install it first.

Then I would quit MT4, and try copying all of the "chart01.chr", chart*.chr files from the problem profile into this new profile just created. Try opening MT4 and see if you're recovered all of your original charts. If so, great, you're done.

If not, maybe just one of the "chart*.chr" files is bad (the most recent??). You could try deleting it.


The bottom line is that the profile and its contents is your only hope of recovering your previous work, so some way you have to fix the corruption -- whatever it is -- and end up with a profile that contains the original chart*.chr files.

Good luck.

P.S. Invest in a UPS power backup. Costco sells one for usually $99, so long as your power usage is typical, or buy a bigger one if necessary. A UPS offers backup and at least some amount of "surge" protection. It's far better than having your (desktop?) PC either abruptly shutting down, or it getting a strong jolt of the surge. A laptop has a battery so is less prone to abrupt shut down, but would still benefit from the surge protection.


P.S.S. While on the topic of recovering a bad MT4, sometimes people add a bad indicator to a chart which hangs MT4. Usually just force-quitting and restarting MT4 is enough to get control (because it usually has NOT actually saved the profile with the bad indicator added). But if it still happens to be stuck upon restart, then usually one can navigate to : Open Data Folder -> MQL4 -> indicators

Obviously if MT4 cannot start, you'll have to figure out where this folder is without using "Open Data Folder". I happen to add the " /portable" command line option to my task-tray icon properties, so my MQL4 is directly in my installation folder -- search Google if interested.
But assuming you don't do that, the Open Data Folder is in some path usually like:
C:\Users\_yourname_\AppData\Roaming\MetaQuotes\Terminal\72C4C14BB6AD0616666DA56791A304AD
(If you have several MT4 installations, this last random name is the hard part to figure out which one is correct. Check dates, etc.)

In the indicators folder, delete-or-rename BOTH the .ex4 and .mq4 file of the bad indicator. Then you can restart MT4. When it looks for that indicator .ex4, it's not going to find it, so it shouldn't hang. But why the .mq4 file also? Because if that file is there, it will auto-compile and recreate the .ex4 again, so you'll still be stuck!

If a delete-or-rename of both the bad .ex4 and .mq4 files does not work, then you could try to delete the most recently edited chart#.chr file under the current profile. You'll lose that chart, but at least you recover the rest of them.

Hi pips4life,
Thank you for that great info on MT4. I never knew all that was possible with MT4. Best of trade to You.

You're welcome. It's only "great info" if it actually works, since I said that I was guessing at some of the details.

Fortunately I just did a quick test to copy a "Chart01.chr" file from one profile into another as "Chart04.chr" (the next unique name in the usual pattern, since I already had charts 01-03).

When I restarted MT4, the copied chart file showed up in the profile! No need to first create-then-replace the "Chart04.chr" file; just add the chart file(s) as unique names.