A few months back I had gotten this MS Character Error with Merlin and a few other MS Characters when I first upgraded from Hal 4.5 to 5.0. I just ran a bunch of system scans and did a system cleanup and then it worked. I know that may not help much for some people but it worked for me. I think that I also tried reinstalling Hal too. You can also try running a registry repair program if you got one.
Here's More About the Issue:
The "error loading msagent character -2147417843-1" is known to occur for several reasons:
1. The Hal Program is having trouble locating either the character or one of the msagent core components required to operate the character. Make sure you have all the required msagent core components installed. If you have already done this and have successfully been running your character using the CyberBuddy program then you should also be able to use the character with Hal as well. You can re-check your setup by going to the below link.
Link to Desktopmates New User Startup:
http://desktopmates.com/instructions.html2. This error is also known to appear on slower computers or a computer that is being depleted of it's resources. First thing is to make sure there's no other programs running at the same time in the background that could be depleting your system resources (memory). Also make sure your system is defragged on a regular basis (every few months at least). And of course check your system for any viruses or worms, they can go undetected and may only cause some minor problems in the beginning by depleting system resources or corrupting files.
3. Here's a few other suggestions that have been reported to fix this problem.
(a) Try changing the setting on how Ultra Hal starts up in the general options under the "Startup" tab and select "I want Hal to start like a normal program from the start menu. Hal will not be accessed from the system tray but rather from a window that appears".
(b) Try running the Ultra Hal install setup again and choose the "Repair Option".
