Thought I would post as may be usefull to others.
Installed some updates today which after a reboot I was left with my wallpaper and nothing else no start menu no panel etc. Desktop right click worked so I could get terminal up and from there ran firefox and nemo (cinnamon file manager) I think the updates mentioned libgl which I think are associated with opengl ? anyway I figured that my video drivers were the problem I use ATI propriety drivers to be able to run steam on linux etc. So I did the following.
Force removed the propriety driver using
sudo /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh --force (I tried without the force but it said something had changed since install)
reboot - Success yay desktop back up
This came backup running the Xorg driver (linux default)
I then installed the approved ATI driver from within mint
menu > preferences > software sources - additional drivers tab and selected fglrx-updates (I have had to do this step before to get the propriety drivers downloaded direct from AMD to work)
reboot
go back to drivers in software sources and switch back to the xorg drivers again.
reboot
I then re-installed the original driver I had from AMD currently version 13.1
Final reboot back as we were
Steam and counterstrike working.Bubby