I'm having some serious issues trying to play Heroes 5 on my PC. I've played the game in the past, but not on this particular PC/OS install.

I can install and run the game fine (setup a profile user, settings, etc), but when I attempt to start the campaign, after loading, a "press any key" screen comes up to start the first map but I can't seem to follow the instruction. The game does not respond to *any* key. It just sits there. The only thing that it will respond to is if I hit alt+F4. Then the exit dialogue comes up and I can exit the game straight to the desktop. Nothing else works. I've also discovered that I cannot skip the opening video for the game with any key either...

I've performed some searching and while I've seen this issue referenced a couple times, I have not discovered a solution. Is there anyone out there that has any idea what is causing this or has a solution?

For the record, I've downloaded the game twice from GOG and uninstalled and reinstalled 3 times. I'm running Win7 64 bit.

If you have a firewall such as Comodo or a paranoid antivirus that asks you what to do for every single EXE you run, make sure you place HoMM5.exe on its exception list (or set Comodo to treat it as an Allowed Application). They tend to screw up controls on so many games.

Running the game as admin may help.

Nope. No software firewall. Antivirus disabled. Running as admin does not help.

Just a wild guess : in the device manager, in the keyboards category, do you have more than one keyboard listed ? If yes, is it named "Standard PS/2 keyboard", or something else ?

Another wild guess, did you try some compatibility modes ?

Yet another one : did you try alt-tabbing out and back in ?

Had tried all of those solutions.

Strangely enough, it was another basic solution that solved it, for now.... Rebooting.

I'm skeptical that this is a permanent solution. There seemed to be something really odd going on, but at least the games working now.

Thanks to both of you for the suggestions!

Ah, I've stopped counting cases when rebooting solved problems ! Before rebooting, did you shutdown then start again with no improvement ?

Shutown+boot is not the same as rebooting as far as Windows 7 or later is concerned, because of the fast startup feature (activated by default).

Completely offtopic, after seeing "stuck at 'Press any key'", first thing that came to my mind was that OP can't find "Any" key on his keyboard.