I use google chrome and had a few important/interesting sites bookmarked. A few days ago, while bookmarking another site, my laptop shut down (don't know why). After restarting it I discovered that all my bookmarks had simply disappeared....

1) How can I recover/retrieve them and 2) how can something like this happen?

Can anybody help me with this?

Chrome keeps a bookmarks.bak file look for it with a file search program like everything or

for xp look in C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data

or Vista / 7 look in C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data

and copy bookmarks.bak to bookmarks

if you get them back, export content go to Wrench > Bookmark manager > Organize > Export bookmarks to make an html file. There are also sync options, Google it.,