UKC

The right hand ctrl key on my laptop is working normally but the left one is behaving strangely, if i press it in firefox it behaves like the alt key (i.e. it brings up the file menus). The button that gives me an apostrophe instead gives it with a 1 in front of it like this - "1'". If I press the ctrl key in excel it restores down or maximises the window. Again the right ctrl key works as normal.

Anyone have any ideas? (oh and I've now realised that the "shift + /" in order to get a question mark pastes whatever is on the clipboard in front of a quesion mark i.e. "[pasted clipboard data]?"

It appears the right side ctrl key is minimising the window in office applications now. It's driving me a bit crazy, im allergic to using the mouse at the best of times

No idea but a recent update of Windows turned my keyboard into US format, which no amount of digging in the menus could fix. Sorted itself out the next day after being turned off overnight. 

That does sound like it's confused about the keyboard layout; updates have a habit of switching this without telling you, and I seem to recall that there's a particular key combination that you can accidentally swictch it with yourself without noticing!

Start menu - settings - devices - typing - advanced keyboard settings, and make sure it's in UK English.

As suggested, maybe the keyboard settings. We had a German colleague who set the keyboard on a shared laptop to German without saying anything, then left on holiday. Until he came back no one could correctly type the password.

Mine did not correct itself unfortunately. For others similar, the settings are under language preferences. On my pc I discovered UK English pack was missing so had to download it and then select it as the display language. Also, changed the keyboard back to English UK as the default.

Seems to be working correctly again.

Thanks everyone, I'll have a check what my key board is set on this evening

Could be keyboard layout, but also consistent with liquid spilt into the keyboard or even a staple fallen between the keys shorting the circuit board into thinking something is being pressed.

Edit - actually, I can't see any way the wrong keyboard layout would give you 1' instead of ' - I think it's either a hardware fault, or being shorted as above. Or possibly a stuck key.

Did you spill tea down it?

Despite the rodent allergy, have you recently connected an external mouse or swapped mice or updated the mouse* or touchpad* drivers?

If you have an external mouse, disconnect it and see if that helps (always a good idea to restart the machine just to be 100% sure). If the mouse turns out to be the problem, it's usually related to a conflict with the touchpad - there's a setting in touchpad setup that allows the touchpad to be disabled when an external mouse is detected.

* yes - I know it manifests as a keyboard problem, nevertheless...