How To Permanently Disable “open On Hover Over”, And Why Did A Favorites Folder Disappear?

My usual browser is Chromium-based Edge. I have hundreds of links saved, neatly arranged in multiple folders shown in the Favorites bar.

I’ve been having a problem I can’t seem to resolve permanently: I can’t disable “open on hover over”. That in itself drives me nuts. I want it disabled in Windows itself, and for all apps, period. But nothing has worked permanently. A few times I was able to disable it in at least the contexts I looked at – I don’t remember how, right now – but it always came back. If anybody can offer any advice on how to make that work, that would be great. But that’s not the main problem right now.

Which is this: I was just moving the cursor arrow across the display, and it touched one of my Favorites folders on the Favorites bar without me pressing either the left or right mouse button, and the arrow grabbed one of the Favorites folders. I feel sure this was related to my “open on hover over” problem if I touch something with the cursor arrow, results can be unpredictable.

At any rate, the folder got dragged a short distance – I could see the little Folder icon as it was dragged across the display – and then it just vanished.

Naturally, I immediately searched Favorites, and sure enough, it wasn’t found.

And of course I hadn’t backed up my Bookmarks recently. But I checked my Bookmarks file anyway, and – you guessed it – this whole Favorites folder wasn’t there.

Apparently it’s gone, so I’m guessing no one can help me with this. But what I want to know is, why did this happen, and how can I avoid it ever happening again?

Thanks for any help.