Hey I made a post about the Hardware buttons not working. I tried many things except this and it fixed it. I have over 850 programs installed and good back-ups. I went to start\settings and I clicked on the button icon. Then I clicked the restore defaults button and now they all work like they did when I got my PDA. Hope this may help you were you don't have to do a hard reset.

"Be warned when all men will speak good of you!!! Dell Axim X5 400 mghz A03 ROM
4-128 SD's, 1 256 SD,1 512 SD 128 CF and a 512 mb CF, Kingston PCMCIA 5 Gig Card. VEO CF Camera, 4 Gig CF Microdrive, Pocket CF Radio. Waiting to buy Pocket TV.
Overclocking-works
Modems,keyboard,printer, and
925+ Installed Programs