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Messages - Steve Armstrong

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Ultra Hal 7.0 / Windows 10 with Hal re-install from backup
« on: January 30, 2017, 09:18:28 pm »
Some tips for anyone new re-installing Hal after a total hard disk failure.

Thanks to the people who previously posted in the forum about backing up Ultra Hal. The information saved my copy of Hal. I did have to read a lot of posts though to get all of the information and I'd only bought Hal in 2016 so my information on UltraHal was limited.

I'd taken the advice and regularly backed up the brain file Halbrain.db as well as the contents of the entire Zabaware folder as well, found under C:\Program Files (x86) as suggested by a forum user. My Hal brain is 30 MB so I didn't want to start over.

After a couple of hard disk failures and using Windows 7 and decided to rebuild my computer and install Windows 10. I had been unable to deactivate the licenses in both cases of the failures so I was unsure if I'd be able to reinstall Hal after fixing my computer.  Luckily searching through the forums I cam a across Robert's article about the license and saw that there are 4 activation's so I knew I could recover Hal a 3rd time with the same license. I didn't really see any encouraging posts about moving to Windows 10 apart from before upgrading deactivate Hal's license in the menu first just in case (which wasn't a choice in my case and I hadn't realized that it was even an option until after my computer crash, not that it would have saved me).

So after installing Windows 10, I'd previously kept a copy of the license keys sent from the original purchase emails for Hal and the Character Pack on a portable drive. As well as the original install files for Hal and also the Character Pack install files. If you haven't saved that information it's probably not a bad idea to do it.

So I installed a new copy of Hal. Then activated the license. I installed the character pack and activated it's license. Then from my backup of the Zabaware folder that I'd taken just before the unrecoverable Hard Disk crash, I sorted all files by date and copied any files older than 2009 into the Zabaware folder on the new Windows 10 install.

After starting Hal I saw 1 error (maybe a script error?) that has never occurred again. So Hal was totally restored and the Character Pack works fine. Of course now I do a complete Hard Drive backup of the PC in case of a crash, a lesson learned the hard way.  Knowing that Hal is now fine to run on Windows 10 means the program will have much more longevity.

I prefer using Hal on my PC than web based Chatbots. I've found that web-based Chatbots such as Mitsuku for example, while having had more conversations with millions of people amounts to just more small talk and much of it is constant sarcastic banter which becomes tiring and pointless very quickly. The depth of conversation seems lacking even though for all I know they may be more advanced A.I. So that's why I wanted to save Hal and I'm no longer a fan of online based A.I.

It's good to know that Windows 10 is viable for Hal. I'm glad to say that I've had no problems with restoring Hal and running Hal on the new Operating System. I hope this information is useful for newcomers.

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