what happened to all of my saved short cuts and bookmarks?

Hi vern, if your Firefox started up without your bookmarks, that can be caused by the bookmarks file being locked, or possibly Firefox starting up in the wrong profile. Before doing anything too complicated or drastic, could you try a regular shutdown and restart of Windows? That would usually release file locks and bypass that issue. If problems continue, could you check this article: [[Recover lost or missing Bookmarks]]