An incomplete list. Note that some come from old notes and may no longer work or be applicable.

You have a hard disk plugged into a USB port and you find that it cannot be read. This happened in August 2020 and we suspect it was due to brownouts.

This is what I did.

1. Plug HDD into Linux machine.
2. Run gparted and look at the drive. See a !, right click and Information
3. See: messages saying drive is having trouble and we should run chkdsk /f in Windows
4. Remove HDD and plug into windows. Using File Explorer, determine which drive letter it is, as it will show up shortly after you plug it in. For us, it was H:
5. Run MSDOS box (Start and run cmd)
6. Execute command

   chkdsk H: /f

   (Where H: is the HDD as we determined above)

   • This will likely take some time.
   • After it finishes, it is OK to run it a second time

1. Control Panel > System > Change Settings
2. Remote tab
3. Under Remote Desktop, select “Allow remote connections to this computer” and check the “Allow connections only from computers running Remote Desktop with Network Level Authentication (recommended)”. 

• net time \\machinename
• To set this machine's time to match remote machine's time
• net time \\machinename /set

NTP=Network Time Protocol

1. Click on the clock in lower-right corner
2. Change date and time settings…
3. Internet Time
4. You should see: “This computer is set to automatically synchronize with 'time.windows.com'. Otherwise:
5. Start > gpedit.msc
6. Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Windows Time Service > Time Providers
7. Configure Windows NTP Client (Enabled, NtpServer “time.windows.com,0x9”, Type NT5DS; other values 2, 15, 7, 3600, 0.  Apply.
8. Enable Windows NTP Client; Enabled.  (Do NOT enable the NTP server.)