Hi Spurlash2,
Despite saving the shortcuts again, once more they have gone.
They are not in the Favourites folder either.
AVG version is 10.0.1390.
No, I've had no viruses or trojans.
(Yes, I too thought it might be the AV not 'liking' various sites...)
The PC had a free version of Norton pre-installed, which was uninstalled fairly early on.
I have CCleaner, and I've just done a disk cleanup.
A thought: I also delete my Flash player cache and the cookies/ temporary internet files daily. Could either of these be the issue?