My Nikon Coolpix 5700 was 4 years old in April this year, and it's been very well used.
But...
During the past year or I haven't done much photography, and when I have I've used my partners Canon instead.

The other day we decided to take a ride out and hunt down some lambs to take piccies of...and when I switched my camera on, the EV button was stuck.
Normally you hold it down and change the exposure compensation with a dial, so the EV button doesn't normally stay down at all.

In this mode I cannot take any photos unless I set the camera in Menu mode, or holding down the Lock button. I cannot change the ISO settings and it's really a pain.

I've contacted Nikon so they are aware of this, but I would want to know if anyone else have had this problem (with the same kind of camera).
I might add that a reset of the system or firmware doesn't fix this.
I've removed batteries, cards, tried to reset the settings from the menu etc. etc. and nothing helps.

Any ideas?

C - who is really frustrated

It doesnt look like a software problem - it is physical.  We had a problem at the studio with the shutter release button, it had got something in it which was sticky and thus it stopped working properly...  if the button is continuously pressed then it will always do something with the software making you unable to do other things... just think about trying to type with the spacebar continuously depressed and you see what i mean.

Best idea is to try and free the button without using too much force - a pin through the sides of it perhaps to try and lift it?

In the end - if you cant use the camera then use your own judgement as to how far you are willing to go to either fix the problem or mess the camera up more - (i usually go for the former )