Control key not working on laptop with Windows 7

All of a sudden the Ctrl key on my laptop stopped working.

After a lot of googling I found a solution on a forum: Pressing AltCtrlFn. This seems to work, but after 15 minutes, the Ctrl key stops working again.

Any ideas?

Update

• Netbook SAMSUNG NP-NF210 Intel
• Windows 7 Starter - service pack 1
• With On-Screen Keyboard i can use CTRL
• when i press CTRL on the keyboard it doesn't light up on the On-Screen Keyboard

Try the other control key (you probably already tried it). Does it work? If it does, the button's bad. Try an external keyboard. Does it work? If that works, it could be either a hardware issue or a software issue. Try a software keyboard. If it DOESN'T work, it's definitely a software issue.

In short: for me this issue was fixed by Ctrl+Alt+Numlock (i.e. Ctrl+Alt+Fn+F11).

Ctrl is working after restart and is not switched off after 15 min (although I did it yesterday - time will show how persistent it is). I've not investigated what this combination undoes, but will if key stops again.

Some more details (2nd post of user Kilikoi).

This does make me wonder: when your CTRL key(s) stop working, does a virtual CTRL keypress still get processed? Try using the "On Screen Keyboard" found in %SystemRoot%\system32\osk.exe.