Galaxy Tab S home button unresponsive and notifications won't swipe down. Why?

[AC Question]

I've tried a dozen things to fix this, pretty much everything short of a factory reset. Cleared partition cache, disabled Kids Mode, deleted all of my downloaded apps. The problem persists in safe mode but disappears when I'm signed in as a guest. Sadly, signing back in as myself the home button doesn't work, the recent apps soft key does nothing, and the notification drawer won't come down.

I can go into the quick settings bar with the assistant turned on but, although I have notifications showing in my bar, they do not appear under the quick settings like they used to. The home button in the assistant does nothing and the recent button there just shuts the assistant.

I tried going through every app left and turning on every permission. My computer can see the device but tells me that the folder is empty and finds nothing on it. The device won't let me move any files to the SD card. It functions the same with and without the case, with and without the card. All OS and security updates are installed.

Since it works perfectly when I switch to a guest account I assume it's a setting and not a hardware problem. I just can't find it! This comes on top of the random reboots that started a few months ago. I love my tabby but I'm about to throw it out the window. Any other ideas? [I hate factory resets and now I'm just stubborn about finding the problem without doing one.]

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! It may be time to try a factory reset. If that doesn't work, then you may have to reinstall the firmware using Smart Switch.