The following information refers to different types of symptoms that may be encountered developing with Microsoft Agent and provides suggestions to isolate and solve the problems. These symptoms fall outside the following areas which have their own dedicated Web pages:
Contents
When I retry loading a character that failed to load, the call fails with a "Character already loaded" error.
The Microsoft Agent control does not unload a character object (release the reference) when its associated character file fails to load. If you want to retry loading the character, you must explicitly call Unload before you call Load the second time. If you attempt this from a Web page script, you also need to precede the Unload call with an On Error Resume Next statement, or the Unload call will also fail. (Note that JScript has no On Error Resume Next statement.)
However, you may not need to include code to immediately retry loading a character when the file fails to load. Microsoft Internet Explorer and the Microsoft Agent server component automatically attempt to retry several times, so the chances that your retry will result in a successful load are remote. A better strategy is to wait (set a timer) a few seconds before you retry.
Back to list of problems
My application allows users to change the default character and when they do, the program crashes.
There are two possible causes:
- If you change the TTS Mode ID of the default character and then allow the user to change the default character through ShowDefaultCharacterProperties, Agentsvr will crash.
This problem has been fixed for Windows 2000 and Windows XP. To avoid the crash on prior Microsoft Windows operating systems, you should either not allow the user to change the default character after you change the default character’s TTS Mode ID, or do not use the default character in your application or Web page.
- If your application does not use Microsoft supplied Agent characters, make sure that your customized character uses a palette with 256 colors or more. For more information see the topic for Designing Characters for Microsoft Agent in the SDK documentation.
Back to list of problems
When I use Microsoft Visual Basic® (or other development tools) for scripting Microsoft Agent, I do not see all of the methods, properties and events used in your samples. How do I access them?
Most of the methods, properties and events supported by the Microsoft Agent control are exposed only at run time. Consult the Microsoft Agent SDK documentation for further information.
Back to list of problems
I seem to get RequestStart and RequestComplete events in my scripts even though I don't set any requests.
This is a problem in Visual Basic® Scripting Edition (VBScript) 1.0. It has been addressed in VBScript 2.0 and subsequent versions, which can be downloaded from the 
VBScript Web page.
Back to list of problems
I don't seem to get RequestStart and RequestComplete events in my script (or program).
This could be caused by one of the following problems:
- Your programming language doesn't fully support ActiveX® controls. Check your documentation to ensure that it supports the ActiveX interface and events for ActiveX objects.
- On a scripted Web page, another control has failed to install or load. Check to ensure that all other controls are installed and loading properly without Microsoft Agent.
- On a scripted Web page with frames, you have the <OBJECT> tag for the Microsoft Agent control on one page, and the events scripted on another page. Events are sent only to the page that hosts the control.
Back to list of problems
When my application tries to install Microsoft Agent on Windows 2000, I get the error that Agent is not compatible with Windows 2000.
A previous version of the Agent core component cabinet file MSAGENT.exe, when executed on Windows 2000, will block installation and display an inaccurate error message that Agent is not compatible with the version of the operating system you are running. In fact, Microsoft Agent 2.0 core components are included as part of Windows 2000, and are already installed by default through Windows setup.
An update to the MSAGENT.exe CAB file is now available for download from our Web site. In this version, the check is removed and the CAB file will not display the aforementioned error message on Windows 2000. Note that this change is only in the set up of the CAB file, and there are no code changes to the Agent core components themselves. Therefore, you are not affected by this update if you already have Agent 2.0 installed, or if your Web site uses an object tag to trigger autodownloads of the Agent core components from the Microsoft Object Store.
If you include with your application the Agent core component CAB file, or if you post the CAB file on your server, you may want to download this update. To do so, click here and select the "Save this program to disk" option. You must have a valid and current Agent distribution license for these circumstances.
You can also work around this problem by using the silent option when installing the previous version of the MSAGENT.exe CAB file. The shell command is:
MSAGENT.exe /q:a
The same applies to the Agent language components that were originally released in October 1998. There was a check that would prevent the Arabic, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, and Traditional Chinese language components from installing on Windows 2000. The newer version of these CABs now posted on the Web site, along with the additional 19 languages added in March 2000, does not contain this check and will install on Windows 2000.
Back to list of problems
Troubleshooting problems with multilingual development
Troubleshooting problems developing using speech
Troubleshooting problems developing Web pages
Troubleshooting introductory page
Back to the Microsoft Agent home page
Last Updated: April 2, 2003
