Dell Inspiron 1521 Touchpad's buttons suddenly stopped working

This is the darnest thing. Everything was working fine until yesterday until I decided to clean the laptop's keyboard using a plain paper tissue (which I wet slightly) instead of the regular alcohol-based computer wipes (which I think are made of some thicker material).

Although I cleaned the keyboard fine, the tissue paper tore and left pieces of it at many places around the keyboard keys. I removed all the torn pieces and as far as I can tell, none remain.

To make matters worse, I did the cleaning while the laptop was at Windows Vista's login screen. I know, I know, thats pretty stupid. Anyways, the keys were being pressed in all sorta different ways. Now, the touchpad's buttons are completely unresponsive and I have NO idea why THAT might have happened. The touchpad works fine and I'm able to click by tapping the touchpad, but of course, my functionality is severely limited...

The buttons *were* responsive earlier when I pressed them REALLY hard, and maybe 1 in 5 tries... but then I deleted the driver, thinking it might help, and now the buttons are COMPLETELY unresponsive (the touchpad works just fine).

I'm not so sure that the buttons are being blocked because of the tissue papers, because I didnt clean the touchpad, except cursorily.

Edit #2: Accidentally put this post in the Audio section - can't figure out a way of putting it in the Laptop Forum... sorry!