SL2: Navigation and Trigger questions

Hi all.  I have a course that is trying to get the best of me.  I'm having two issues that I can't seem to resolve so hopefully someone can help.

First, I have a slide that has five buttons that branch off into separate paths, and at the end of each path the student returns to this main page.  I want the Next button disabled on the main page until the student has followed all 5 paths, so I've set a trigger to change the state of the next button to disabled when the timeline starts, and another trigger to change the state of the next button to normal when all five buttons are visited.  The button states change to visited as they should, so I don't have any idea why the next button won't function.  Help!

My second issue is with the navigation.  I have a sidebar with a menu, and I've set the menu navigation to free, so why can't I click on the items in the menu to bounce around within the course??

Thanks for any and all help you can provide!