MyFxBots Blog | Enabling and Verifying the Use of Prepared Tick Data by MT4 for Backtesting [OUTDATED]

By reaching this guide here, you must have applied the previous guides - tick data free download and converting it for Metatrader 4 usability, so I assume that you have now the HST files in your history\[your broker's name] folder and the FXT in your tester\history folder. If this is not the case, please refer to the previous linked guides first.

Enabling tick data backtesting

As the latest Metatrader 4 client builds are unable to use custom FXT files anymore, a special software has to be run to enable it for that.

Now, there are 2 options:
The Tick Data Suite, a commercial (paid) software enriched with more features than the free script and is fully supported at the official website. A trial version is available.
The completely free Birt's patch script with some limitations. There is no available support for it.

The free script limitations include but not limited to:
Optimizations are not supported, if tried would cause crash.
Third party tools as Walk Forward Analyzer are not supported.
The script runs only manually after Metatrader 4 launches.
The 2GB limitation removal is available only for builds 405+ and for select operating systems for the previous builds.
If a backtest was made outside the script, a subsequent backtest in the script will result in a crash.
Real spread has to be manually enabled and the terminal have to be restarted if real spread is no longer needed.
There is no available support for it. Only the troubleshooting area could help a little.

For a more detailed comparison table, please navigate to the Feature matrix page.

According to your choice above, please navigate to the appropriate guide:
Tick Data Suite guide
Birt's patch guide

How to verify it is working

If the backtest is running and the file in tester\history was not recreated, this means that everything is ok. Of course, it will skip the "Collecting M??" and "Using M??" steps. At the end of the backtest, a red bar should be seen in the results tab normally and modeling quality 99% in both the results and the balance chart too.

If you faced any problem, please navigate to the FAQ and Troubleshooting page.

Running multiple Metatrader 4 instances from the same folder

If the Tick Data Suite is involved, this is performed automatically and as many MT4 terminal instances as needed can be launched from the same folder.

Otherwise, if Birt's patch script is the one involved and multiple instances are needed to be run from the same folder, one of the loaders can be used, they are available in the tick data downloads area. These loaders are compatible with builds 225-409; the generic loader in the main folder is compatible with builds 405-409 while the generic loader inside the old folder is compatible with older versions. Individual loaders are available too for several older builds but the generic loaders should work for any build lower than 409. No support is available in the official website for these loaders too.

Be aware that the generic loaders will need to configure themselves for every particular build so a series of messages will displayed and the terminal will be closed once the relevant offsets are found. This occurs just in the first time to run and is totally normal.