[Loren]

I have never seen this but I have seen a related bug in Windows that might possibly be responsible.

This bug was all over the place in Windows 98. I have never caught it happening in XP so I don't know if it was fixed or not.

Under 98 at least the system would lose actions involving the special keys (ctrl, alt & shift) that happened during a video mode change, including into/out-of a DirectX game even if the screen size remained the same. (Whether it lost others or not I don't know, it was only these that were apparent as they have meaning while held down rather than when pressed.)

The result would be that the system would believe the key was in a different state than it was and do all sorts of evil to what you typed until you figured it out. Note that the left and right keys are separate as far as this bug is concerned. Thus if you get the right shift stuck down you can bang the left shift until the sun goes old and it won't help. Hit the right shift once and the problem is fixed.

It happened to me enough that my immediate response to wonky keys is to press all 6 special keys.