So I tried to install drivers and now they cant be found?

I think I found the problem.

I was talking go a woman this morning who asked me about this Nvidia
icon in her Admin menu. I looked and sure enough, it was back on my menu
again too. It happened after the update yesterday morning. I dont know
why that keeps downloading and installing but I have a ATI card and Im
not installing it.

After removing it and rebooting, I now have desktop effects back and
probably flash too.

Do you by any chance have two video cards? I have had that happen
because I have on board ATI and a separate Nvidia graphics card. I get
an ATI icon like you get an Nvidia one. I just ignore it because the
separate card works fine, but perhaps your situation is different.

I do not. Its a shuttle computer and I put the ATI card in.

Any chance you have a NV chipset or Bios? Maybe something is confused?

I emailed Shuttle and they said they didnt think there was anything in
the BIOS like that.

Something is causing this for sure but it only happened after there
kernel update.

When you look on the back of the computer is there another set of
video out ports (vga or otherwise)? Mine has one that came with the
motherboard (ATI), but it was next to useless so I bought a separate
Nvidia graphics card with 512 MBs. I have never tried to shut the ATI
off in the BIOS, because it has not been a problem for me. It is
something to look into, just to see if it would work.