Shortcuts disappear

HP laptop, Win 7. IE, Pale Moon, Thunderbird, Open Office, Notepad are the most common programs I run. IE, Pale Moon and Thunderbird are running at all times. Background programs are CoffeeCup LockBox. AVG free, MalwareBytes free, CCleaner, with AVG running its overview but not its toolbar.

Every once in awhile, 7 of my shortcuts on the main screen disappear. I've not been able to record any action that causes this. Just that they are gone sometimes. The disappearance can occur at cold boot up or resume after automatic timed shut down, or resume after automatic sleep.

I lose device manager, system, solitaire, freecell, minesweeper, and mahjong. NONE of the other shortcuts disappear, including control panel.

It's not a big thing, but rather annoying.

Pops

This is the only thing I can think of that would be causing that issue:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/978980/

System Maintenance Troubleshooter - Turn On or Off

I will try putting the games into a folder and see if that fixes the annoyance. It sure sounds as if this fits the action I'm seeing. Why the troubleshooting program would assume the links to the operating system's "System" and "Device Manager" are broken is puzzling.

Pops

It has now been two weeks since I put the games in a folder, leaving all the other bookmarks up on the desktop. that appears to have worked.
It still doesn't answer why Win7 would declare the games, system page and device manager page to have broken links.

Thanks for the info and help.

Pops