LIGHTHACK LCD SCREEN NOT WORKING

Did you tried the potentiometer for contrast?

Yes tried several times. dims up and down the white rectangles

Are all connections from Arduino to the display ok?

Have resoldered and checked every connection between Arduino and LCD

Did you anything changed in the code? It seems that one of the data lines are broken. Did you test the connections with a multimeter?

multimeter out all of the circuits from the base of the Arduino to the solder points on the display. all in the correct place and all beep out. 

Could not having two of the cherry keys be causing this??? they broke in transit...

multimeter out all of the circuits from the base of the Arduino to the solder points on the display. all in the correct place and all beep out. 

Could not having two of the cherry keys be causing this??? they broke in transit...

It sounds more that is a display problem, it has normaly nothing to do with the buttons. Maybe you try an example for the LCD library in the Arduino IDE to see if the display work.