Hi Robert,
If you go to Photo Mechanic's Preferences ( or Settings if you are running Ventura ) from the Photo Mechanic menu, there will be an Export button at the bottom of the page. If you Exported the preferences before this problem occurred, then you could Import the PM_Export.PMX file you created earlier to restore the previous settings. If you restore Photo Mechanic's preference folder from a Time Machine backup, before this problem, then your Favorites panel entries should be restored. The preference folder is called com.camerabits.PhotoMechanic and will be in your user account's Library -> Preferences folder.
regards,
--Bob