Microsoft Agent Beta Versions

[Konnor88]

Figured I should make a thread on this, since this is something TMAFE has been looking into for years.

This is the status of the various Microsoft Agent beta releases:

Pre-Microsoft Agent 1.5 (Official first release)
Microsoft Agent Beta - Found! Somehow found this one on December 22nd, 2025 on a random CD on Internet Archive from early 1997, which lines up with the October 28th 1996 release date.
Microsoft Agent Beta 2.0 - Screenshots exist, Lost. I found some screenshots of this build in the Visual Basic 6.0 Professional's MSAGENT directory inside of UI.doc, other than that, I know it was released on June 18th, 1997 and introduced MACE, Robby, and Merlin.
Microsoft Agent 1.3 (Beta 3.0) - Screenshots exist, Lost. Screenshots of this build are present in the Microsoft Agent Software Development Kit book, mentioning a version number of 1.3 and build number of 175.
Microsoft Agent 1.4 - Leftovers found, Lost. The Microsoft Agent 1.5 build 232 German installer mistakenly has its product version labeled as 1.4.0.197, confirming a beta 1.4 that was likely private.

Pre-Microsoft Agent 2.0 (Second official release)
Microsoft Agent 1.6 - Leftovers found, Lost. The Microsoft Agent 1.7 build that was found alongside some of the early 2.0 builds mentions Microsoft Agent 1.6. Like 1.4, this was likely an internal build never released for testing, unlike, Beta 1/2/1.3 (Beta 3).
Microsoft Agent 1.7 - Found! This build was found on BetaArchive a while back and later tested and inspected by TMAFE for other build/version mentions.

Of all these builds listed, I am willing to bet that 1.3 (Beta 3) and Beta 2 have the highest chance of being discovered (albeit still slim, as those two were at least publicly available on MSDN at some point). Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever seen screenshots of 1.6 or 1.4 as those were likely internal builds like 1.7 (which is a miracle in itself that it got distributed with a 2000 beta at one point).

Individual article links on what we know so far:
https://agentpedia.tmafe.com/wiki/Microsoft_Agent_Beta
https://agentpedia.tmafe.com/wiki/Micro ... t_Beta_2.0
https://agentpedia.tmafe.com/wiki/Microsoft_Agent_1.3
https://agentpedia.tmafe.com/wiki/Microsoft_Agent_1.4
https://agentpedia.tmafe.com/wiki/Microsoft_Agent_1.6
https://agentpedia.tmafe.com/wiki/Microsoft_Agent_1.7

[Triston Klocke]

I don't think we will never get screenshots of them, at all. they are forever lost and was never archived.

[united123]

I don't think we will never get screenshots of them, at all. they are forever lost and was never archived.

That's unfortunate.