Microsoft Agent Beta

Microsoft Agent
Name	Microsoft Agent Beta
Developer(s)	Microsoft
Initial release	October 28th, 1996 (28 years ago)
Written in	C++
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Discontinued?	Yes

Microsoft Agent Beta is the beta release of Microsoft Agent. It was released and announced on the Microsoft Developer Network on October 28th, 1996. It was published on MSDN so that developers can learn how to utilize Microsoft Agent inside of software. This version of Microsoft Agent is currently lost and unobtainable with no download link. Despite it being known that it is on MSDN October 1996 Disc 6, no copies of the disc have been found online.

Characters

The only character known to exist for this version is Genie, which makes him the first Microsoft Agent to be created. There is no information on other characters it might have released with, but it is confirmed that characters that were made with the beta MACE that came with the beta Microsoft Agent did not work in the final release of Microsoft Agent. Therefore, any characters created for the beta Microsoft Agent would not be compatible with either Microsoft Agent 1.5 or Microsoft Agent 2.0.

Name difference

Microsoft Agent Beta also went alongside a different name called "AgentX". This is proven by documentation of earlier versions of Microsoft Agent, and also the Microsoft Agent ActiveX Control referring itself as AgentX.

 <object id="AgentX" classid="CLSID:855B244C-FC5B-11CF-91FE-00C04FD701A5" width="100" height="51">

The "DelGenie.inf" file included with Microsoft Agent 1.5 also has mentions of the AgentX name, including all the files the Microsoft Agent Beta contained:

[TTSCopy]
cgrm_enp.dll

[GenieCopy]
AgentX.ocx
AXServer.exe
Char11.dll
Audman15.dll
;!lpc.dll
axhooks.dll
axmrshl.dll

[GenieOCA]
AgentX.oca

Trivia

This version of Microsoft Agent is currently lost.
This version of Microsoft Agent was only published to developers who had access to the Microsoft Developer Network.
No screenshots exist of this Microsoft Agent version.