Allan,

First the answer,

SET ESCAPE OFF
ON KEY LABEL ESCAPE *

Now, if I am the user and I want to do something on my computer and your code is running I would press the escape key to get out of what was running. If that didn't work I would shut the machine off. Disabling the escape key does NOT solve your problem, it only makes it worse. Escape has never corrupted data and damaged files, but the power switch certainly will.

I suggest you program the escape key so it will gracefully stop the process and return control to the user.