I know the bar you mean and it does have some bookmarks but a much shorter list than the Google one. I'm assuming that once I installed the Google toolbar this list stopped updating.
Underneath the Google toolbar I appear to have a Yahoo toolbar and no yellow star although I can access the yellow star via Local Disk (C) which has the full list so they are on IE. I'm not sure why I have a Yahoo toolbar as well; I fear my senior moments are gathering pace.
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.