Acer 5570z buttons under touchpad not working

I had to replace the daughterboard (power jack) in my 5570z. Once i did this the laptop still didnt work. I misdiagnosed the problem for a bad motherboard but turns out that wasnt the issue. I now have 2 functional motherboards. Now, I cant get the buttons under the touch pad to work. These buttons are soldered onto the board so im assuming that the laptop can be outside of its case and the buttons will still function. Neither board's buttons will work and im really confused at this point. I've tried booting into linux off the cd but didnt have any luck there either. I've also tried a mini version of xp, still no response from the buttons. The only thing im wondering right now is even though the buttons are soldered on to the board that they still might have a dependency on the touchpad. The touchpad was working while the buttons still werent but now the touchpad cable is so worn out from unplugging and plugging in that the touchpad doesnt work now either. Anyone have any idea why these buttons arent working, if they don't work in clean loads of linux or xp then it has to be hardware right? Also, does anyone have a 5570z that they can unplug their touchpad on and tell me if the buttons under it still work? Any help would be very appreciated, sorry this is so long.

Thanks,
bigguy733