Had a look at my keypad, the stock reborn keypad and the buttons wake keypad, all 3 of which are different
The volume up and down are already set to do at least a partial wake in all three, you can adjust music volume etc with the screen locked, this can be removed relatively easily but I doubt most would want that.
The buttonswake zip posted by nick on page 3 I believe it was. Has been set to wake from home, menu, search and back as well as power, so flashing it should get you back to a working state that you want, but I believe you said you tried it already.