Some desktop shortcuts disappeared - why?

Skyzoomer said:

...........I don't have shortcuts in any location that I know of. If there are other places I should be looking, please let me know.

Thanks,
Sky

The Start Menu should be filled with shortcuts.

Skyzoomer said:

.......when I switched back to monitor, the monitor's screen resolution somehow changed to 1024x768 and I had to change it back to native resolution of 1640 x 1080. All of the icons were rearranged during that senario......

I deal with this quite often - so I use a tiny tool names Desktop Restore.

Edit:
You can also save the location of the shortcuts to a text file using that tiny tool. This gives you a list of all of the shortcuts (and their locations). Or you can use your camera like you mentioned. I would probably use the Prnt Scrn button and MS Paint... but if a camera is more to your liking then....

Just recently I had a similar issue with shortcuts and icons dissapearing as well.
Even though my problem was more extense than yours I have the strong feeling that your problem, same as mine, is related to an error related to the thumbnails creation and usage in Win7. Surfing the net reveals quite a significant number of people who all faced and still facing similar problems.
You can read what happen to me here
icons dissapear on some sort of random basis

Iam convinced now that the only way solving this sort of problem is a Repair Install or even better a new installation of Win7 which I just have done yesterday and which turned out to be a lot less painful than it was in the past as Win7 performs automatic backup of data on the very same HD and in about 20 minutes all was solved :). Just throw your Win7 disc in and Win7 will guide you. Its really a no-brainer and normally you dont even have to bother with serial and reactivation of Win7 as when you reinstall the same OS with same serial and license and the PC is plugged into the Internet it seems to activate automaticly, at least that happend to me yesterday.
It took a while to download and install all Updates via Automatic Update though.
Only little downside is that you have to reinstall all programms but as a side effect you have a clean install with slim registry and everything working smoothly.