Why cant I save documents on my desktop anymore

I have always been able to save documents, copied web pages, photos, etc. to my desktop. Never used to be a problem. While on a document, I would click "save as." A box would appears to the left with all he places I could save the file, including "desktop." I would just click "desktop" and he file would be saved there.

The past couple of weeks, when I click "save as", the dialog box that appears to the left no longer has the word "desktop" in it so I cannot save to the desktop any more, at least this way. The 'desktop" saving option just seems to have disappeared.

I have seen some responses to this problem on various websites but I really have problems with these. They are too technical for me, an every day end user without tech expertise. Or the response suggests a round about way to save to the desktop (e.g, saving to documents and dragging to the desk top. Don't know how and don't want that much trouble. Other suggest saving to favorites and doing a bunch of other stuff. Unintelligible and too much of a hassle just to save to desktop.

Why did this simple way to save to desktop disappear and is there any way I can restore it? Please be gentle and simple. I need hand holding

I have a Dell insperon computer. Windows 7. The problem occurs on Internet Explorer (IE 8) and on Firefox 7.

Driving me nuts. Thanks for any help.