I've followed and tried suggestions here:
viewtopic.php?f=67&t=107214
here:
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get- ... -menu.html
and here:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1186103

Have not been able to get shutdown and restart buttons back.

Any ideas?

Just to confirm - you are using KDM as your display manager correct?

Using Slim. But have been using Slim for years. Not sure why it disapeared. Just tried KDM did not restore icons. :/ Does this help:

So for above I did...
# systemctl disable slim
# systemctl enable kdm

...when I logged out it was still slim so had to reboot and now I have all the options but really prefer using Slim.

Reinstalled everything SLiM + KDE4 on blank drive and buttons missing on boot. :/

Do you have ConsoleKit running on your system?
Please check the output of "ck-list-sessions" under sessions started by both KDM and Slim.

A similar thing happened to me too on Mandriva 2011. When I would click the red "power" button the computer was unresponsive. Furthermore, clicking the "star" button (same basic look and function as the Windows "Start" button), the menu would be brought up in the background rather than in the foreground and I would have to ALT+TAB to it.
Using the "reboot" command from the terminal fixed this specific problem, but the menu is still brought up in the background, which is very inefficient and annoying.
Other people are having this same problem; I have seen it here viewtopic.php?f=67&t=108532 and have heard of the problem in Fedora 17.

I haven't heard of these issues before - I would suggest creating a new thread for them though. I'm not entirely sure, but I do think the menu shipped with Mandriva is not either Kickoff or the traditional options which KDE ships with. As for Fedora, I think they ship with the KDE defaults but also ship an alternative menu applet which is similar to the one Mandriva ships.