Update on the situation:
With the help of the support team, I was able to solve the problem. It was the ribbon connector all along. After reinserting the ribbon and locking both sides into place, I haven't experienced a crash since. There was only one instance in which the previous behavior occurred; as soon as I powered up my unit after reattaching the panel, the glide and hold buttons sent no information. Thought I was doomed when that happened. I put all of my faith into resetting the globals again and that permanently fixed the malfunctioning - I assume the previous state of the globals was still lingering around.
Very happy to have my model working at full capacity now.