Mechanical Keyboard issue - "Hermes M1" - hera.exe stopped working - *Solved* (kind of)

[h3xus]

Hello,

 

Edit - Solution: After few days of a headache, it turns out that this software is not compatible with Win10 - you can find it in "HERA_UserManualV1.0_EN" on their official site. Don't even bother writing to support, they will simply ignore you, their site functionality is really bad, doesn't work well with Chrome, there are a lot of mis-matches in the documentation, keyboard functions and specifications in general; E.g. One doc shows they have 23-roll over key functions, another document says 21, no consistency in their own work, just plainly bad;

 

Hope someone will find this article before they buy an actual keyboard from them; My suggestion - don't buy it. Will try to get my money back for it tomorrow;

 

 

I'm looking for some general help. My wife bought me an odd mechanical keyboard "Hermes M1" - http://www.gamdias.com/products-en-gb/keyboards/hermes-m1-en-gb

I was happy to finally get my first mechanical keyboard, wanted that for a while now. Now the problem started when I tried to set it up.

 

When I plugged in the keyboard via usb (3.0) it did not work at all, the lights on the keys would come up, but no response. Thought that's normal - probably missing drivers. Went into their official site, downloaded a "hera" software that would allow it to work. The software ran normally, but something was not right, I couldn't seem to use it to switch the keys to my preference; E.g. It would not allow me to use a built in function in hera to switch around WIN key with FN key; Thinking it's just an odd bug, decided to reboot the machine; After the reboot the ghost key setting (or w/e else it's called - when you can press multiple keys at once) in hera, changed from 21 keys to 6 keys, I thought that was weird and once I pressed on the radio button to change it back to 21 - "hera.exe stopped working" error comes up. The keyboard is printing random keys now, as if its mapping is all wrong or half of them doesn't work;

 

Re-installing the software doesn't help; I think it cached up some drivers or something somewhere;

 

Here's a snippet from event logs as how it crashes:

Faulting application name: hera.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x59d21cfe
Faulting module name: hera.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x59d21cfe
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x001740a3
Faulting process id: 0x130
Faulting application start time: 0x01d33bb09b69c2be
Faulting application path: C:\Users\[username]\Desktop\hera 2.8.0 portable\hera.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Users\[username]\Desktop\hera 2.8.0 portable\hera.exe
Report Id: 039a8204-21da-4969-a85e-dd8fcff29200
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

Device Manager is showing 2 keyboards when Hermes M1 is plugged in:

HID Keyboard Device

HID Keyboard Device

 

Both devices are shown as working fine, both using "keyboard.inf"; If I am not mistaken that's just basic keyboard drivers within windows; I'm currently on an old keyboard PS/2 connection, same drivers are loaded on it, works fine.

 

So, basically, the event logs are useless, the hera.exe is failing with no real explanation; Software itself doesn't log any errors.

Things I've tried so far:

1. Re-installing hera software;
2. Uninstalling it, downloading portable version of it;
3. Plugging into different USB ports (2.0 / 3.0)
4. Launching hera.exe without the USB plugged in - (actually works, but doesn't detect the keyboard; As soon as the keyboard goes in BAM, crash)
5. Launching hera.exe with compatibility settings / as admin;
6. Disable Avast (AV) to see if it's not blocking anything;
7. - the best step so far: Tried on another machine, keyboard goes in, once you start hera - CRASH; Only thing is this another computer has the exact same build / specs / parts;

Wrote to their official support, but you know... e-mails, who reads those anyways, so haven't heard anything from them for 2 days now;

There are no articles about this online, almost as if nobody had that before, odd?

 

Some info about my machine:

OS Name    Microsoft Windows 10 Pro

Version    10.0.14393 Build 14393
System Model    MS-7996
Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6500 CPU @ 3.20GHz, 3192 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)

 

Something I've found as surfing through "System Information" on my machine > components > input > keyboards:

3 Keyboard devices as I've mentioned;

  USB Input Device - PNP Device ID: USB\VID_1B80&PID_B507&MI_00\6&9DFC2E4&0&0000

  Driver    c:\windows\system32\drivers\hidusb.sys (10.0.14393.82, 37,50 KB (38.400 bytes), 23/08/2016 10:15 PM)

 

  HID Keyboard Device - PNP Device ID: HID\VID_09DA&PID_9090&MI_00&COL01\7&309A31C6&0&0000

  Driver    c:\windows\system32\drivers\kbdhid.sys (10.0.14393.206, 38,50 KB (39.424 bytes), 29/09/2016 10:45 PM)
 

  Standard PS/2 Keyboard - PNP Device ID: ACPI\PNP0303\0

  Driver    c:\windows\system32\drivers\i8042prt.sys (10.0.14393.0, 111,50 KB (114.176 bytes), 16/07/2016 2:41 PM)
 

After some more fiddling with the software, it seems that what it does is download Hermes drivers if I don't have them and create a file in it's install directory "hermesM1.qrs" - if I delete this file from hera install location, the software does run without problems and shortly it suggests that I'm missing drivers, if I press download, it crashes pretty much instantly.

 

 

I'm kind of trying to get a fresh opinion on this as I am running out of ideas today; (Will try this keyboard on my wife laptop tomorrow (she's working all night today); It runs on win7; So, the hope is still alive. Any comments are welcome. 

[Radium_Angel]

You shouldn't need any software at all just to make the basics work.

My guess is the software (hera.exe) isn't Win10 compatible....

[Max Caulfield]

that's what u get for buying cheap kb

[h3xus]

Alright, seems that I'm getting somewhere - and that is, getting tired of this bull****. Right, I was digging through all manuals I can find on this thing, turns out Radium_Angle was right, it's not supported, but take a look at this:

 

Users manual for the keyboard:

 

 

Users manual for the software:

 

 

Not to mention other types of errors I've found while reading their documentation; Blah, useless company... ; ( Will demand a refund tomorrow.