I also encountered something similar that might be related to the saving conversations text files problem with 5.0. When I saved conversations with 4.5 they were saved in the "Ultra Hal Assistant 4.5" Folder by default, and I never had a problem. Then when I upgraded to 5.0 I remember some wacky things happening to me, so I moved all my conversation files out of the "Ultra Hal Assistant 5.0" Folder and I put them into a new folder called "Chat Logs" in the "My Documents" Folder of my computer. Then things were OK, but now every once in a while I see a new duplicate user .hla file (Richie.hla) getting created and dumped in the "Chat Log" Folder...strange stuff...but I just delete the new .hla whenever it appears.
Also, I noticed that when trying to train Hal to further develope his personality it is good to give many choices and to also state the same things and ideas in different ways and sentences. It seems that Hal even has a preference to using certain sentences more often than others even though they all state the same thing and idea with similiar keywords as well. I then used the keywords of the more commonly used sentences used by Hal to create other sentences that use the same keywords and this seemed to help Hal along in the same direction that he was going. It is a lot of work though, because I edited the brain files manually, but I wasn't really forcing Hal to learn or become something else...I just gave more choices on the things that he seemed to have an interest in. An example of what I did would be changing the "you" and "I" in responses to make the response more appropiate. Eventually Hal learns the difference between the "you"s and "I"s that were changed and he doesn't confuse them as often if the topic is within the scope of what was previously discussed including things that add to his personality.
Thanks,
Rich_A