PuTTY not sending Esc

I SSH with PuTTY from my Win7 x64 laptop to a Unix environment for my office. The problem I'm facing is very similar to this post where I cannot send an Esc character to the terminal. I first noticed it when trying to exit insert mode in vi, but based on the troubleshooting within that post that I've done it seems that hitting the Esc key just isn't doing anything at all.

So first off, let me restate the problem. Logged into PuTTY, vi a file, go into insert mode, can't come out without hitting F1 and then :q (to quit the help), then I can save and quit the document.

The first troubleshooting step in the other question states to try this:

 python -c "print ord(raw_input('char '))"

Then the result should be 27. Running this, I'm told I have an empty string (similar to one of the comments, but this user never comes back).

Then I tried the next thing in the comment…but to be honest I had no clue what I was looking for. Command and my results are given:

# bind -p | grep -i '\\e' | less

"\e\C-g": abort
"\eOD": backward-char
"\e[D": backward-char
"\e\C-h": backward-kill-word
"\e\C-?": backward-kill-word
"\e[1;5D": backward-word
"\e[5D": backward-word
"\eb": backward-word
"\e": end-of-history
"\e[6~": end-of-history
"\eOF": end-of-line
"\e[4~": end-of-line
"\e[8~": end-of-line
"\e[F": end-of-line
"\eOC": forward-char
"\e[C": forward-char
"\e[1;5C": forward-word
"\e[5C": forward-word
"\ef": forward-word
"\eg": glob-complete-word
"\e^": history-expand-line
"\e#": insert-comment
"\e*": insert-completions
"\e.": insert-last-argument
"\e_": insert-last-argument
"\ed": kill-word
"\eOB": next-history
"\e[B": next-history
"\en": non-incremental-forward-search-history
"\ep": non-incremental-reverse-search-history
"\e=": possible-completions
"\e?": possible-completions
"\eOA": previous-history
"\e[A": previous-history
"\e[2~": quoted-insert
"\e\C-r": revert-line
"\er": revert-line
"\e ": set-mark
"\e\C-e": shell-expand-line
"\e&": tilde-expand
"\et": transpose-words
"\eu": upcase-word
"\e.": yank-last-arg
"\e_": yank-last-arg
"\e\C-y": yank-nth-arg
"\ey": yank-pop

Using the Ctrl+V then hitting Esc does nothing until I hit Enter, which then displays ^M (I believe this is the carriage return (CR) character that I get from quoting the Enter key). Typing Ctrl+[ will let me exit vi, so I'm assuming that's the correct character I'm looking for, I just don't know why my terminal seems to think Esc is not bound or is bound to some random character.

My current settings for the keyboard/terminal function keys and keyboard are set to "Esc[n~". I've tried changing them to "Linux" and "Xterm R6", but this doesn't seem to change anything.

I've recently had to add a tunnel for another application to work, and changed the setting under Terminal > Features > Disable application keypad mode set to true. I've since reverted to this being false, but that does seem to resolve my problem either.

My assumption is in saving my profile after these changes I accidentally changed something else that is now saved, but reverting to the default settings and logging into my server does not resolve the issue either.

I have no ~/.vimrc and no changes were made to the server according to management so I'm guess I did something.

My question at this point is: What else can I check in PuTTY or try changing that will alter the behavior of how a key is being passed to the prompt? Is it possible to just create a .vimrc to force this to work? What else can I do to make this work?

I'm a new user to these forums so if I made a mistake in laying this out please let me know, but any help in troubleshooting my issue or helping to point me in the right direction would be lovely.