Shift key / Uppercase doesn't work, but only in some apps

[spiraldancing]

Running TV10 portable on a Win7 machine, remoting into Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon x64. 

I use a Windows-only accounting app called AceMoney, run it in Wine on Linux, when I try to type uppercase characters, I get the matching lowercase (A -> a, $ -> 4, + -> =, etc), so I'm assuming the shift keys themselves are not working.

Running LibreOffice Writer, same thing ... all virtual machine input inside of VirtualBox, same thing.  However, gedit, notepad++, thunderbird, and many others apps have no problem.  Currently, when I need uppercase in one of the crippled apps, I type what I need in notepad and then copy/paste it into the app or VM.

I had this same setup working perfectly a couple of months ago on Mint 17.1, but that machine died.

Suggestions?

thanx in advance