The following information refers to different types of symptoms that may be encountered using 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:

• Troubleshooting problems installing Microsoft Agent
• Troubleshooting problems loading Web pages
• Troubleshooting problems using text-to-speech engines
• Troubleshooting problems using speech recognition engines

• The character leaves images or trails behind when it moves.
• I can hear the sound effects that play during certain animations, but not other animations that correctly play the sound effects on other computers.
• Applications that play MIDI have no audio output when Microsoft Agent is running.

When a Microsoft Agent character moves or plays an animation, it requires the applications behind the character to update themselves on a timely basis. When the character moves across the screen, it may be possible sometimes to see some residual images that disappear quickly (depending on the speed of your computer and the applications that are currently running).

This behavior may also result from a combination of the following causes:

• Your computer system does not meet the minimum system requirements for Microsoft Agent. Check that your computer meets the system requirements for Microsoft Agent.
• The application(s) behind the character does not process updates in a timely fashion. Shut down some of the applications currently running or try dragging the character over the desktop or a folder window. If you see a noticeable improvement, this problem with trailing images may not be avoidable.
• If you are still using an early pre-release version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0, try updating to a more recent version (at least the final released version of Internet Explorer 4.0). Early pre-release versions of Internet Explorer 4.0 did not handle updating the screen correctly which resulted in residual images of the character remaining on the screen.
• There may be a problem with your system's screen drivers or hardware. Make certain you have the latest drivers for your graphic hardware. If the problem still persists, you may want to contact the manufacturers of your video card/adapter and computer.

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The sound effects that play during some animations originated as .wav files which typically are encoded with audio CODECs to reduce their file size. This audio data subsequently needs the same CODEC on your computer to play it back successfully.

It is possible that a character was created with .wav files that were encoded with different CODECs. If your computer plays the sound effects for some animations but not others of a character (that do play correctly on other computers), it may be because your computer does not have all of the necessary audio CODECs installed. This may be corrected by (re-)installing the Sound Recorder application from the Add/Remove Programs icon in Control Panel.

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Microsoft Agent uses MIDI to play a tone when you press the Listening key. If you find that this interferes with other applications that play MIDI data at the same time, you can globally turn this off for all Microsoft Agent applications in the Advanced Character Options using the following procedure:

• Browse the Try Out Microsoft Agent sample Web page. When the character appears, right-click it and click Advanced Character Options from the shortcut menu.
• In the Advanced Character Options dialog box, click the Speech Input tab.
• Clear the Play tone when you can speak check box and click OK.

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Troubleshooting problems installing Microsoft Agent

Troubleshooting problems loading Web pages

Troubleshooting problems using text-to-speech engines

Troubleshooting problems using speech recognition engines

Troubleshooting introductory page

Back to the Microsoft Agent home page