Escape Problem

[metal_head]

Dunno if anybody else has this problem. It startet to appear about 2 months ago and I have it on several levels. The levels starts and everything runs fine, than when I hit Esc. to enter the menu, the game just stops, it doesn't crash, he sounds continue to play, but it's like paused and I can't get to the menu, I than ave to exit the game with the task manager... any ideas?