> I was informed that my kernel had been updated, my old graphics driver uninstalled, but the installation of the new graphics driver had not proceeded as expected. Mind you the updater reported everything as a-ok.

It may have been ok anyway. Without further details we can't say. Most drivers are included with mainline kernels so your "old graphic driver" may have been an out of distribution gfx driver (nvidia?) that doesn't support new version of kernel for example or said driver may have been replaced by something else with a different name.