Important Technical Specifications

64-Bit Operating Systems Support

The TradeStation Platform is a 32-bit application and is not designed to take full advantage of a 64-bit operating system. Nevertheless, the TradeStation platform is able to run and does benefit from a Windows® 64-bit operating system.

Multi-threading and Multi-processing Support

The TradeStation platform is a collection of various processes that perform different tasks. TradeStation processes primarily utilize multi-threading technology, although the extent of the benefits of multi-threading or multi-core computing depends on the operating system and the nature of the tasks performed by the user.

TradeStation and Windows XP

Microsoft has not updated the Windows XP operating system since early 2009 and is currently in process of ending all support for Windows XP. The TradeStation platform has continued to evolve by taking advantage of the latest technologies wherever possible. As a result, with each new update to the TradeStation platform we are encountering new issues directly related to the conflict between new technologies and a dated Windows XP operating system.

Our extensive testing of the platform continues to uncover new issues that are directly related to Windows XP. The latest and most serious issue that we’ve encountered is that some customers who are using Windows XP and upgrade to version 9.1 Update 13 or higher will no longer be able to launch the TradeStation platform. As a result, if you are currently using Windows XP as your operating system, at this time we are recommending that before you apply Update 13 or any future update to TradeStation 9.1, that you first upgrade your operating system to Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Although not all customers using Windows XP will experience an issue with version 9.1 Update 13 or higher, we cannot predict when additional issues will occur that are unique to the Windows XP environment; moreover, there is likely little that we will be able to do to address those issues. As a result, Windows XP has been removed from our list of minimum requirements and will not be supported in any future TradeStation versions.