I have no idea what it could be. If you have reset the create text tool and it is still misbehaving I am baffled.

I can create times new roman "AUDIO" using the bevel option.

I also created "AUDIO" as curves and then went into the group and selected each letter and then surfaces>bevel plus and could successfully create each letter including the "A".

All I can think of is close maya, delete your user/documents/maya folder (or rename it), restart maya and try again to see if it has anything to do with your prefs being corrupted.