Just pressing and holding the 'a' key in notepad did not replicate the issue.  Based on my hypothesis that the function of the shift key is what is being interfered with, I came up with a couple tests that do reliably replicate the issue 100% of the time.

Method #1 (simplest):

• Open Notepad
• Be sure Noise.exe is running
• Hold down the shift key and hold any letter key - hold for at least 15 seconds - in 10 seconds or less your stream of capital letters will switch to lowercase.
• Exit Noise.exe and repeat and you will notice that it does not happen.

Method #2 (slightly more complex):

• Start with a big blocK of text in an editor of some sort (notepad, wordpad, etc.)
• Be sure Noise.exe is running
• Position your cursor at the beginning of the block of text
• Hold down your shift key, and then (with the shift key still held), hold down your right arrow key (this will start highlighting the text).
• Keep both keys held for at least 15 seconds.  In about 10 seconds or less you will notice that the highlighting stops and goes away as if you had released the shift key.
• Exit Noise.exe and repeat and you will notice that it does not happen.

I note with some interest that the letters that are generated in the Noise! window are all capital letters.  Perhaps if they were lower case letters it would fix this?

For whatever benefit it may offer, this happens on two different systems I have tried it on - both of which are Windows XP Professional.  I have not tried to replicate the issue on any other operating system.

Hope this helps.

ThaNKs!

P.S.  Any inappropriate capitalization in the above post was due to the issue at hand, and was left in for purposes of illustration.