I have had quirky behavior similar to this, at the very least. It happened to me once recently, and I couldn't get out of the game, either, because I couldn't click on the quit button... and finally I figured out what had happened. I think.
ACTUAL PROBLEM: Somehow, Windows has decided to give focus to a program which is not CoH, but which is also not visible behind CoH's full screen display.
HOW IT WORKS: As long as you're not focused-to-chat, CoH is grabbing raw keyboard input data and turning it into things like "pop up this menu" or whatever. As soon as you enter the text window, though, somehow the question of what happens when you type turns into a question for the Windows text entry stuff, which thinks you are typing in the other window.
HOW I FOUND IT: I noticed that I couldn't click on the "quit" buttons, and that when the mouse cursor was over them, it turned into a standard Windows mouse cursor. After some experimenting, I established that a large hunk of the screen, including the middle, was showing cursors for another window which was invisible but presumably "in front of" the CoH window. Once I figured that out, I used cursor shape changes to find the upper-right corner of the window, moved a few pixels down and left, and clicked -- causing that window to become closed, and suddenly CoH worked again.
This has happened to me a couple-few times, only when playing on actual Windows -- I don't see it on Linux or Mac. I have no clue what's going on or how to fix it. I assume that setting the game to "Windowed" and then maximizing it would help.
(Question: On Mac, I can do command-enter to toggle Windowed/Full Screen. On Windows, I can't, obviously, because there's no Command key; is there a toggle to Windowed mode, though, that I've just missed?)
That sounds like a great possibility- I'll fire it up again tonight and try to find this invisible window of which you speak. It's as good an answer as any I've thought of! FRUSTRATING, to say the least, though.
Thanks for your help, Seebs.
(This occured while I was setting up both of my characters and trying to type within the chat window; occurred continually after reach of multiple system restarts and CoV downloaded updates)
All of a sudden, the CoV program or my Windows 7 64-bit OS decides to stop reporting keystrokes in any text window. Naming my character, for example, or trying to type in a bio results in the screen doing a little flash, then even in mid-sentence it stops recording anything I type.
Even while in the game post tutorial-server, when I try to type, the cursor goes into the text window, but does not display any characters as I type.
Google seems to believe I'm the only person this has happened with. Can it be true? Anyone else run into this? I'll have to send a real system help ticket if nobody can give me any advice..