MetaTrader and several screens

It is quite clear that MetaTrader was not created with the idea of many screens in mind. While there is no problem when we have two identical screens, because you only have to stretch the program window, the problem arises when we have two screens with different sizes and resolutions.

Here comes the question: what about running two MetaTrader instances and moving one of them to the second screen? This is an often used technique.

The first problem arises when you try to run the second instance, because… it can’t be done, because MetaTrader allows for only one instance running at the same time – but only one from the same directory.

A solution quickly comes to mind – lets copy the whole directory and run the second instance from the copied directory. This will work, but it is not the best approach.

Why isn’t it? Because two directories require copying all new indicators, EAs, templates and profiles.

Of course there are no problems that can’t be solved.

If MetaTrader is installed on Windows on a hard disk formatted with NTFS system, we can use a very useful tool called mklink.

mklink is used for creating links (both symbolic and hard) to files and directories on hard drive. It means that the folder is “seen” by the system in several places (or under several names).

This way MetaTrader can be easily cheated, because it “thinks” that it is run from two separate directories, but there is only one copy on hard drive, additionaly represented by a symbolic link (no, you don’t have to understand that to use it ;) ).

Lets assume that we have MetaTrader installed in “MetaTrader 4″ directory in “Program Files” on the C hard drive. Lets create a symbolic link to it:

mklink /D "C:\Program Files\MetaTrader 4 2nd monitor" "C:\Program Files\Meta Trader 4"

Thanks to this simple operation we can now easily run two instances of MT4 with the same settings and indicators.

This solution is not completely free of drawbacks – one of them is that the settings of the last closed instance are saved.

A compromise is to copy the main MetaTrader directory and create links to directories: experts, templates and profiles.

There are a few methods and combinations so everyone will find his own best option.

I hope that the ideas presented here will help you to use MetaTrader with more screens. ;)

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