MetaTrader 5 not responding or freezing

Causes, most likely first

1. Too much chart history is being kept in memory

Tools, Options, Charts: "Max bars in chart" set to Unlimited is the single most common cause of a sluggish terminal. Set it to 100000 or less. An EA does not need more, and gold at one-minute resolution accumulates bars fast.

2. The terminal is downloading history

On first open of a symbol or timeframe, MT5 pulls history from the server and can appear frozen while it does. This is normal for a minute or two on a fresh install — a chart stuck on "Waiting for Update" is the visible half of the same process.

3. Too many charts, indicators or EAs for the machine

Each chart with indicators consumes memory and every tick fans out to all of them. On a small VPS — 1 GB is genuinely too little for a loaded terminal — this shows up as freezes rather than a clean failure. Close charts you are not trading and remove decorative indicators; see VPS requirements.

4. Antivirus is scanning the terminal directory

MT5 writes logs and history continuously, and real-time scanning of that folder throttles it. Exclude the terminal data folder from the scanner rather than disabling protection.

Why this happens

A frozen terminal is a stopped bot: no ticks are processed, no trailing stops move, and open positions are unmanaged until it recovers. Whatever the cause, that exposure is the reason to fix it rather than tolerate it — see why uptime matters.

Genuine corruption is rare and announces itself differently — the terminal crashes on startup rather than freezing during use. Before reinstalling, try the load fixes above; they resolve nearly every case.