Thanks for continuing to help me. Based on your advice, I googled removing favorites from the explorer navigation pane in Windows 7. I found several tutorials on the registrty hack. I checked them and found that my machine had the hack already so I restored the registry value to default. Voila, Favorites is back in the Classic Shell Explorer navigation pane on reboot.
I own a small computer reselling business, and it looks like on of my techs was helping me out customizing my machine a little too much. (appropriate smiley goes here)
Ivo wrote:
Windows 7 by default should have Favorites at the top. There are some registry hacks to make it go away. Classic Shell doesn't do anything to add or remove that item.
Windows 8 has an option to toggle Favorites if you click on the "Navigation pane" button in the View tab of t he ribbon.