My keyboard has been working just fine for a while. It’s my backup, and is a little grungy, but we seem to have banged the gunk into the right places, and now it works fine.
Except: just in the past couple days, the left control key just doesn’t do anything. Is there something I can do, like use some software to instruct Windows to recognize this key? I kind of doubt the key isn’t sending any information, or do you say that is more likely? I use that key all the time in Firefox; it’s really aggravating.
In my non-expert opinion, it’s far more likely to be a hardware problem. Does the right one work, or are you completely out of control?
Most keyboards use two plastic membranes with tracings on both pieces. Pressing the key causes two of the tracings to form a circuit and the key is recognized. You may have a piece of crud under the key, or between the two membranes. The metal may be wore off where the tracings contact each other under the key. One of the tracings have corroded somewhere on the membrane. You can take apart the keyboard and look for the problem or buy a new one. The <ctrl> button is like a shift key in that you can’t turn it off in software or be reassigned. It’s a modifier button.