Keypad not functional, have tried everything.

Question

Hi, I have recently come into a serious problem with my Verizon BlackBerry Curve 8300, and a lot of people seem to share this problem:  The keypad is not working at all.  I can scroll the trackball across the different menu items, but I can't press the trackball, nor any of the buttons on the keypad- even the red and green call buttons.
It all started a few days ago when my Curve was working normally.  It had worked fine early that morning, and then I had proceeded to keep it in my pocket during the later morning hours, just as I did every day before that.  However, when I took it out to check my messages, I encountered the issue described above.  This has actually happened to me before on some occasions, but those were few and far between.  A simple battery pull would usually solve the problem.
As the day went on, though, I did numerous battery pulls and the keys still would not work, no matter what I did.  I researched this problem and found that it could be a sign of wetness.  But I was certain that my Curve has never gotten wet, and I was able to prove this by checking the moisture stickers on the battery and the device.  Both did not indicate that the device had gotten wet- the battery sticker was still white with a red strip, and the device sticker was still a white square.  Even so, I still tried all of the solutions given on the other forums, including putting the phone in the oven, freezer, and in dry rice.  None of those worked, so it's clear that this is not an issue of wetness.
I then moved on to the more daring solution of physically taking apart the phone and cleaning the keys with isopropyl alcohol.  I made sure the cleaning was absolutely thorough; I cleaned the keyboard membrane, the trackball and its membrane, the keys themselves, the silver front plate, and even the protective case that housed the phone.  There was no corrosion, but there were tons of dust, dirt, and lint covering all these parts, so I figured that that MUST be the problem.  I put my phone back together and turned it on, though, and the keypad STILL would not respond.
The final thing that I did was back up the phone, reinstall the OS (version 4.5), and reboot the entire phone.  That didn't work either, so it couldn't be a software issue.
Later in the day, though, I did one last battery pull just because, and then I started randomly mashing the keyboard.  Lo and behold, the phone WORKED.  I was so dumbfounded that this is what caused it to work again; I couldn't believe it, and thought it was too good to be true.  Turns out, it was.
For most of the day, the phone worked fine, but one of two things would happen:
1. The keyboard would lock up completely like before while doing simple tasks, and I would mash the keyboard until it would work again.
2. The phone would freeze completely and I would have to do another battery pull.
#2 recently happened again a few hours ago, but this time on the battery pull, the keyboard would not function again, even after mashing it numerous times.  So now, I am literally back to square one and left with nothing to do.  I still have NO idea what is causing this problem or whether it is a software or hardware issue.  My phone had gone from working perfectly one day to being completely unusable the next.  Now it seems like it's doing whatever it can to make sure it doesn't work.
By now, most people would probably say that the only solution would be to replace the phone.  However...I can't.  My phone never had a warranty to begin with, and I won't be able to get the phone replaced unless I pay a huge sum of money, as our local Verizon stores don't carry this model anymore.  I am most likely stuck with this phone until our 2-year contract expires in about 4 months.  Until then, I am in need of a way to salvage the phone and make it last those final 4 months.
If you have ANY possible solutions to this doozy of a problem, it would be greatly appreciated.   I hope that RIM acknowledges the many people that have this kind of problem and fixes it soon, because a cell phone should NOT have these kinds of problems, especially in emergency situations when we need them most.

Answer 1

I notice from your system specs that you're running a very old version of Flash. Could you try updating to the latest one which is 10.2.159.1 It also contains a patch to fix a recently discovered [http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Adobe-releases-security-update-for-Flash-Player-1228930.html Zero Day exploit]. You can get it from here: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/
Have you experienced any unusual events watching Flash videos lately? It's possible that you may have been a victim of just such an attack. It might be worth doing a malware scan using this well-known scanner from http://www.malwarebytes.org/ The free version is more than adequate to eliminate any current threats.