You probably still have them as long as you haven’t reformatted. It sounds like your Firefox profile just got corrupted and you are now running a new profile without bookmarks.
Do a search of your computer for bookmarks.html and see if your old one turns up. If it does, you can copy it into your new mozilla profile, or just get the links from it.
The typical file path to your mozilla profile is here:
C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
WOW!!
Even though I had ‘deleted’ firefox, there they are!!!
Thank you!
Next question: How can I export bookmarks, like what can be done in IE?