XP desktop features disabled

I recently installed a Radeon 7000 video card and it's myriad utilities on
my computer. I found some of the utilities useless or non-functional and
uninstalled them. I then began tweeking it's software based control panel.
Somewhere along the line, it disabled the "transparent selection area"
feature and the drop shadows feature on the icon captions. There wasn't any
selection in the card's control panel that should have changed this. I then
went to the Performance Options window and reselected the check boxes for
these features. It make no difference. I then uninstalled all of the
card's software and drivers and then installed the latest drivers, etc off
thier web site. That made no difference either. Is there some way to
re-enable these features?