Windows 7 Start Menu – Why It Opens When Escape is Pressed

Although this may be overkill, I'd not say that there's some malware that specifically prevents you to do that, but maybe an app that interfers with the expected behaviour:

1. Run a check using anti-malware tools, like Adwcleaner or MalwareBytes, just in case.
2. Open the msconfig utility: Win+R and execute msconfig.exe.
   • Disable any unwanted applications that run on stratup.
   • On the Services tab, disable any unwanted services that run at startup too. You may want to mark the Hide Microsoft services so that you don't disable anything important accidentally.
   • By default, the msconfig utility marks the disabled services as Disabled, which means that you can't execute them even manually. Alternatively, you can execute the services.msc utility so that you locate such services and change their state to Manual, so they don't run on startup automatically but you'd still be able to start them if you need them.
3. Reboot and see if something changes, then you can start re-enabling services and apps on startup until you detect which one is causing you trouble.

There are many causes to the behaviour you experiment and these are some steps that may come in handy to detect your issue, but of course it's not the only solution.

I have a new ASUS gaming computer and the same thing has happened. I finally found a solution on a thread. I removed my ASUS screen saver and it stop popping up on it's own. So for you ASUS users that may have this issue try it!