Favorites Menu

For some unknown reason every so often I get a different
Favorites menu I can completely shut down and restart and
my Favorites menu I was working with yesterday won't be
there. There will be an incomplete and Different menu in
its place. This is so frustratingas I work on Genealogy
and use my favorites menue for research constantly. I
have my regular menu divided into many different folders
and in each folder are many other folders containing
information I need to get to easily. The last month has
been good but today I'm back to that partial menu. Maybe
tomorrow everything will be back to normal and maybe it
will take several days to return to normal.
EVERYTIME I do the Microsoft patches something crazy
happens!!!! I uploaded 2 patches yesterday. Microsoft
says they are critical patches so I do the upload.
I just did a virus scan and a defrag yesterday and
everything was fine. I also do not have a "Settings" in
Start any more and no "Scan Disk" anywhere on the
computer any longer. I'm running XP Home that came with
my Dell computer.
Can anyone HELP me PLEASE!!!!
I'm so frustrated I want to wipe the whole MS system off
and install Linux!!! Only unfortunately Because of my
Genealogy program I can't do that!!!
Now again today Microsoft is telling me I need to upload
another Critical Patch!!
Also everytime I upload a patch the whole computer gets
slower and slower.