I'm not sure what its really called. But I THINK its called the pinup menue. Its when you clikc the green start button and a list of your favorite programs pop up.

I have a good 5 or 6 programs on it.
But this morning I logged on and they were all gone and I had to put them back up.

This is the first time this has happened.

Any thoughts?

It hasn't happened again yet.

Thanks :)

Hi,
If they were not still listed in the Start Menu subdirectory, something had deleted them there (which is also where I would go to replace them by pasting shortcuts.) If they were still there, something had "messed" with your Registry. I have had it happen to me with no better explanation other than "Windows' gremlins."
Peace,
Clarke

Can do a system restore to before this happened as whatever may have caused it may still be there

Have you installed any software recently

Run your antivirus and malwarebytes to see if anything comes up

Thanks guys. I ran my cleaners *ccleaner, malwarebytes) and the malware DID find more than 300 issues :P so we will see if it happens again now that I got rid of it :) thank you :)

Pinned shortcuts to programs appear in the top half of the panel (above the middle bar) when you click on start.
The programs below the bar are just the ones you've recently used.

If you right click the start button, go down to properties. In the box, choose 'Start Menu' tab and click on customize. There you can select how many programs can populate the start menu --the recently used programs. If you clear the list, you will see that your recently used programs are cleared from the Start menu panel, but the PINNED programs (chosen by right clicking on a program and selecting 'Pin to start menu') are still there.

The recently used programs could have been cleared by a program you have on your computer, such as a privacy security cleaner.

Ccleaner does indeed delete MRU (Most Recently Used) entries. Perhaps this is what happened.