PinballX not responsive while in game

[axilla]

I'm not sure if I'm putting this in the right place and I will post the ini file as soon as I get home today, but I wanted to get this started in case anyone has had a similar issue or knows of a quick fix.  I am running the latest version of PinballX on a Win10 machine and when I am playing a pinball table, I cannot ext the VP software to get back to the PinballX frontend.  I have tried resetting the Quit and Exit key mappings in PinballX to multiple values, but it's as if PinballX is not listening for any keystrokes once the VP software is running.  Currently, when I click on the exit button, it brings up the the VP menu with the options Resume Game, Debug and Exit.  I have tried setting the button on my cab to Escape, "E" and "C" with no luck.  If I leave it on Escape and disable the Escape key in the VP editor, absolutely nothing happens.  I have created a quick work around by mapping two seldom used buttons on my cab to "ALT" and "F4" so that I can forcefully close the VP host and return back to PinballX.  Once back to PinballX, the Escape key does work and will pull up the Return, Exit, and Shutdown options.  Any suggestions would be helpful.  Thanks!