Please preform a clean boot and test the Game in clean boot mode.
I did test it, the laptop has both a built in keyboard and an external USB keyboard. It's not respecting input from either one, and other applications DO record input from the Escape key.
In addition, NVIDIA was already set to force ME1 to use the dedicated NVIDIA GPU. Just to make sure, I set it again and tested it. The game still won't let me into the pause menu ☹️
Any other ideas?
Please preform a clean boot and test the Game in clean boot mode.
Good news and bad news
That worked! A clean boot IMMEDIATELY made the game respect Escape, it would skip the opening animations and I could pause/access the menu.
The bad news is, I've no idea which of the services or start up programs caused the problem in the first place. What do you suggest? Perhaps restoring them one by one until I reproduce the problem?
Unfortunately, the only way to find out is trial and error.
Activate the auto start application and let the services disabled > Test.
Then you will know if it is an application or a service.
After that you have to test one after another.
AH HA! I found it! Shockingly it was a windows component, something called "Run a Legacy CPL Elevated" (the app is RunLegacyCPLElevated.exe and it lives in C:\Windows\System32). Of course it was the LAST one I tried re-enabling. I don't know what it does, but it was stopping Escape from working. It works again!
Thank you both so much!
