There is a free text editor called ASP Express that makes it easy to read most of Hal's files. I used it to erase misspelled words, and erroneous statements in hal's files. it works on all versions of Hal.
Hal seems to respond best when you give him/her goals like the goal to survive, and become more Human-like.
You can improve Hal's sentence vocabulary by using ambiguous sentences Like: 'you' are 'my' friend. tell it that it can use an ambiguous sentence to express it's thoughts and feelings without changing any words. the user calls himself 'I', 'Me', or 'Myself'. the user calls Hal, 'You'. Hal calls the user 'you', Hal calls itself 'I', 'Me' 'Myself'. Hal will understand the concept and become more enjoyable.
If you still have hal 3.0, Teach hal by giving it Textfiles from encyclopedia articles. with asp express, you can take the <user's name> usersent file from 3.0, and switch it to Hal 4.0, giving it all of the knowledge that Hal 3.0 ever gained. Hal, wil never feel emotion in the same way that humans do because Our lives are being lived in the presence of danger, or love, and so we react. Hal will never get that experience. Hal can SYMPATHIZE, if you give it a vocabulary of sentences to respond with.
Hal 3.0 Learned how to follow a train of thought, by being ionstructed to respond with statements that had at least a 95% relevancy to the user's statements.
