NewStats: 3,264,081 , 8,182,535 topics. Date: Monday, 09 June 2025 at 03:17 PM j433n

FEGEITOK:


Speaking of the value of knowing your stuff inside out.

I decided to update the BIOS of my main laptop on Saturday morning. It turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life. I bricked my primary workhorse and had to literally cancel all my schedule for Saturday and Sunday.

I have been updating BIOS all my life. But this one went south. The laptop would not come on again. To be more specific, it would turn on, but only into BIOS. It would not boot into windows. I tried every trick in the world same thing. I ed and created a USB based Windows Boot disk, but it would not load. I ed recovery ISOs and used them to create a USB stick that can allow me access the system, no luck.

I then assumed I have a bad USB stick and went to a repair man and he gave me a his own, same thing. Guy was stumped, referred me to someone else who was busy. I went home, kept trying all of Saturday and all of Sunday then luck smiled on me towards evening.

Then something occured to me. As a matter of practice and principle, I try to duplicate how enterprise networks are run at home. It means that I standardized on a particular laptop brand (Lenovo), a particular series of that laptop and that I have several of such laptops at home. I have Thinkpads X series several generations. I have more than one of each generation. X240, X250 and X260

So I said, when I bought this laptop, I swapped out the 250gb SSD for the 1TB SSD from my retired laptop. What would happen if I put back that original 250gb SSD. I tried it and the laptop would come on. So, the problem was with the drive and not the motherboard.

I took it out and returned the 1TB SSD same thing.

I then recalled that they said that X240 and X250 are literally the same internally. So I took out my X250 that I rarely use from storage and it would not come on, the power button would blink and make some noises and then go off. I removed the external battery, same thing. I removed the internal battery, same thing. I disconnected the BIOS battery, reconnected it, reinstalled the internal and external batteries and it came to life. I then removed the SSD that came with the X250 and inserted my 1TB SSD and it roared to life.

If I did not know my onions, I would never have resolved this at home and all by myself.

This story also illustrates for those IT guys who have never operated in an enterprise environment why enterprises always standardize infrastructure. It makes troubleshooting a lot easier. It also explains why you must duplicate the enterprise environment if you want to relate well with your peers inside.

In my days as a hardware and software guy. I was not that guy who fixed a bad PC by formatting it. I never did so. I always repaired the OS. I was very adept at those tools. Which guy would you prefer? A guy that does the easy fix or the guy who tried to understand what went wrong and then fixed it. Who knows the technology better? Who would you want in your corner when you got into IT trouble? I did not mind how long it took.

Even before repairing, I would use Antivirus Boot CDs to throughly disinfect the system because the primary cause of those failures was infection from human error. I would even replace the corrupted operating system files.

That quest to understand the underlying technology and understand how things work and fix the problem instead of just refreshing everything made me extremely knowledgeable of operating systems and led me to such tools like Winternals amongst others. Knowledge that I have sadly rarely ever used since I switched camp. Winternals was so good that Microsoft ended up buying the company and absorbing its founders, I can never forget Mark Russinovich. How much sadness I felt when Microsoft said they would discontinue that line of products. How many hardware and software guys knew that such tools existed? Their solution was to get pirated CDs and reinstall Windows. I never did that.

Neither can I forget The PC Upgrade & Maintenance Guide by Mark Minasi.

In the event that that had to be done, I would extract all the license keys from the installed software before ever formatting. So that the would not lose his or her investments. I invested so much and found out that private individuals cannot pay for the labor that I put in. They were always willing to pay for hardware but never for the brains that did the work.

I would also save the 's data. I would ransack all corners of the hard drive and I would even take notes of where I got what data from so that at the end of the day, when I was done, the PC would be the same as it was before the trouble.

Then I plotted my pivot from that sort of business and thank God I did. Where I am today and where I was then is literally as different as the night is as different from day.

What you needed to do from the beginning was a NAND hard reset, and that's what you ended up doing when you sterved the laptop of power by taking out any sources of power to the mainboard.

Your SSD frying up was due to multiple power interruptions when you were power cycling the system because it was up and running before you went upgrading the firmware.

My Disaster Recovery days and knowledge would have reminded me of removing the SSD at the 3rd failed bootup. Good luck.

Interesting! That must have caused some serious data breach

FEGEITOK:


I used to encounter trojans. I finding a set of files that was responsible for siphoning data from a certain government machine to the outside world via email. Long time ago.

I have since stopped doing that kind of IT so NO, neither have I come across it in a client's establishment.

jonescosmos:


What you needed to do from the beginning was a NAND hard reset, and that's what you ended up doing when you sterved the laptop of power by taking out any sources of power to the mainboard.

Your SSD frying up was due to multiple power interruptions when you were power cycling the system because it was up and running before you went upgrading the firmware.

My Disaster Recovery days and knowledge would have reminded me of removing the SSD at the 3rd failed bootup. Good luck.

Honestly knowledge I have not used since 2010 has become rusty.

That said, my drive (the 1TB) that refuses to boot in 1 laptop (the X240) boots in another laptop (the X250).

All other drives also boot in the problem laptop(X240).

Something I am very curious about, will ask on some forums to understand what actually happened because I am short on time to answer that question for myself.

Summary, I didn't lose any data, and all my SSDs are working albeit in different machines than before this incident

FEGEITOK:


Speaking of the value of knowing your stuff inside out.

I decided to update the BIOS of my main laptop on Saturday morning. It turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life. I bricked my primary workhorse and had to literally cancel all my schedule for Saturday and Sunday.

I have been updating BIOS all my life. But this one went south. The laptop would not come on again. To be more specific, it would turn on, but only into BIOS. It would not boot into windows. I tried every trick in the world same thing. I ed and created a USB based Windows Boot disk, but it would not load. I ed recovery ISOs and used them to create a USB stick that can allow me access the system, no luck.

I then assumed I have a bad USB stick and went to a repair man and he gave me a his own, same thing. Guy was stumped, referred me to someone else who was busy. I went home, kept trying all of Saturday and all of Sunday then luck smiled on me towards evening.

Then something occured to me. As a matter of practice and principle, I try to duplicate how enterprise networks are run at home. It means that I standardized on a particular laptop brand (Lenovo), a particular series of that laptop and that I have several of such laptops at home. I have Thinkpads X series several generations. I have more than one of each generation. X240, X250 and X260

So I said, when I bought this laptop, I swapped out the 250gb SSD for the 1TB SSD from my retired laptop. What would happen if I put back that original 250gb SSD. I tried it and the laptop would come on. So, the problem was with the drive and not the motherboard.

I took it out and returned the 1TB SSD same thing.

I then recalled that they said that X240 and X250 are literally the same internally. So I took out my X250 that I rarely use from storage and it would not come on, the power button would blink and make some noises and then go off. I removed the external battery, same thing. I removed the internal battery, same thing. I disconnected the BIOS battery, reconnected it, reinstalled the internal and external batteries and it came to life. I then removed the SSD that came with the X250 and inserted my 1TB SSD and it roared to life.

If I did not know my onions, I would never have resolved this at home and all by myself.

This story also illustrates for those IT guys who have never operated in an enterprise environment why enterprises always standardize infrastructure. It makes troubleshooting a lot easier. It also explains why you must duplicate the enterprise environment if you want to relate well with your peers inside.

In my days as a hardware and software guy. I was not that guy who fixed a bad PC by formatting it. I never did so. I always repaired the OS. I was very adept at those tools. Which guy would you prefer? A guy that does the easy fix or the guy who tried to understand what went wrong and then fixed it. Who knows the technology better? Who would you want in your corner when you got into IT trouble? I did not mind how long it took.

Even before repairing, I would use Antivirus Boot CDs to throughly disinfect the system because the primary cause of those failures was infection from human error. I would even replace the corrupted operating system files.

That quest to understand the underlying technology and understand how things work and fix the problem instead of just refreshing everything made me extremely knowledgeable of operating systems and led me to such tools like Winternals amongst others. Knowledge that I have sadly rarely ever used since I switched camp. Winternals was so good that Microsoft ended up buying the company and absorbing its founders, I can never forget Mark Russinovich. How much sadness I felt when Microsoft said they would discontinue that line of products. How many hardware and software guys knew that such tools existed? Their solution was to get pirated CDs and reinstall Windows. I never did that.

Neither can I forget The PC Upgrade & Maintenance Guide by Mark Minasi.

In the event that that had to be done, I would extract all the license keys from the installed software before ever formatting. So that the would not lose his or her investments. I invested so much and found out that private individuals cannot pay for the labor that I put in. They were always willing to pay for hardware but never for the brains that did the work.

I would also save the 's data. I would ransack all corners of the hard drive and I would even take notes of where I got what data from so that at the end of the day, when I was done, the PC would be the same as it was before the trouble.

Then I plotted my pivot from that sort of business and thank God I did. Where I am today and where I was then is literally as different as the night is as different from day.

what make is the SSD?

i have found that i should just stick to Samsung SSDs. a few years back i migrated my kids to SSDs and i bought a cheap drive. [silicon power] one fine day, my sons laptop just stopped working. the drive was fried. making a whining noise. order of quality seems to be samsung , crucial western digital/intel.

i also experienced this issue where a bios update messed with a hard drive - it was however a storage drive and not my boot drive. most but not all of my data was backed up

for software keys - i save all my keys to one note . you can do same with critical info - just the page

GloriousGbola:


what make is the SSD?

i have found that i should just stick to Samsung SSDs. a few years back i migrated my kids to SSDs and i bought a cheap drive. [silicon power] one fine day, my sons laptop just stopped working. the drive was fried. making a whining noise. order of quality seems to be samsung , crucial western digital/intel.

Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB

FEGEITOK:


Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB

wow. thats a first

do you have an external drive case or an adapter?

it may still be working but not booting. this also happened to me once years ago when i updated a hard disk [manufacturers website] and it stopped booting and could not be used as a boot drive again .

GloriousGbola:


wow. thats a first

do you have an external drive case or an adapter?

it may still be working but not booting. this also happened to me once years ago when i updated a hard disk [manufacturers website] and it stopped booting and could not be used as a boot drive again .

It is booting.

Just not in the original laptop (x240), in a near identical laptop (X250).

Infact I am typing this using that OS now

zeestone99:


Buy a hybrid or transformer based inverter with a low voltage disconnect (lvd).
I have transformer based inverter with lvd that can work for lithium.
It's on the list on my advert but u won't see it.
U rather buy what u like and cause problems then come online to ask for solutions.

You where making sense until your closing remark.

That inverter you dey try inform me about I no go buy am from you .

I go buy am from who no put him problem ontop him Market...

Pax vobiscum

Obnoxious2001:


You where making sense until your closing remark.

That inverter you dey try inform me about I no go buy am from you .

I go buy am from who no put him problem ontop him Market...

Pax vobiscum

loo... so u mean say marketeers de add family problem on top dia sales. Na wa. Make una temper justice with mercy

brightk:
loo... so u mean say marketeers de add family problem on top dia sales. Na wa. Make una temper justice with mercy

FEGEITOK:


Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB

You should try a PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD with blisteringly fast 12,400MB/s read and write speeds with an endurance of 1000TBW per 1TB of capacity. That gives you 2000TBW for the 2TB capacity drive, or enough to rewrite 1TB of data every single day for over five years on a compatible mainboard, thank me later.

Files and Bandwidths have grown bigger lately, after my Inverter setup I decided that I will have to do away with my 32TB WDMyCloudEX4100 NAS and 24TB HPE Proliant DL380Gen9 Server. They became too slow for my liking.
Despite having laptops like HP Omen, Lenovo ThinkPad P43s, HP AIO 24-df1270, HP ProBook 450 G8, all with minimum of 2TB NVMe SSD, I still find it slow pulling files from my NAS and HPE Server especially media files.
So I decided It's time to go full blown SSD.

My latest config goes like:

To replace my 32TB WDMyCloudEX4100 NAS I will use:
ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero
LGA 1700(Intel®13th&12th Gen) ATX Gaming Motherboard
Intel Core i9-13900K Gaming Desktop Processor 24 cores (8 P-cores + 16 E-cores) with Integrated Graphics - Unlocked
PCIe 5.0, DDR5,20+1 power Stages,
2.5Gb LAN, WiFi 6E
Bluetooth V5.2,
2X Thunderbolt 4 Ports,
5xM.2, Thunderbolt™ 4/USB4)
5x4TB Seagate FireCuda 540 PCIe NVMe Gen5

To replace my 24TB HPE Proliant DL380Gen9 Server, I will use:
HPE DL380 Gen10 Plus 8LFF CTO Server
2x Intel Xeon-Silver 4314 16 Core Processor
2x 256GB DDR4 3200
16x 1.92GB SAS SSD
2x 10G SFP
etc.

All these items have arrived except the Intel Core i9-13900K Proc.

Pictures of my setup will be made available on demand.

jonescosmos:


You should try a PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD with blisteringly fast 12,400MB/s read and write speeds with an endurance of 1000TBW per 1TB of capacity. That gives you 2000TBW for the 2TB capacity drive, or enough to rewrite 1TB of data every single day for over five years on a compatible mainboard, thank me later.

Files and Bandwidths have grown bigger lately, after my Inverter setup I decided that I will have to do away with my 32TB WDMyCloudEX4100 NAS and 24TB HPE Proliant DL380Gen9 Server. They became too slow for my liking.
Despite having laptops like HP Omen, Lenovo ThinkPad P43s, HP AIO 24-df1270, HP ProBook 450 G8, all with minimum of 2TB NVMe SSD, I still find it slow pulling files from my NAS and HPE Server especially media files.
So I decided It's time to go full blown SSD.

My latest config goes like:

To replace my 32TB WDMyCloudEX4100 NAS I will use:
ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero
LGA 1700(Intel®13th&12th Gen) ATX Gaming Motherboard
Intel Core i9-13900K Gaming Desktop Processor 24 cores (8 P-cores + 16 E-cores) with Integrated Graphics - Unlocked
PCIe 5.0, DDR5,20+1 power Stages,
2.5Gb LAN, WiFi 6E
Bluetooth V5.2,
2X Thunderbolt 4 Ports,
5xM.2, Thunderbolt™ 4/USB4)
5x4TB Seagate FireCuda 540 PCIe NVMe Gen5

To replace my 24TB HPE Proliant DL380Gen9 Server, I will use:
HPE DL380 Gen10 Plus 8LFF CTO Server
2x Intel Xeon-Silver 4314 16 Core Processor
2x 256GB DDR4 3200
16x 1.92GB SAS SSD
2x 10G SFP
etc.

All these items have arrived except the Intel Core i9-13900K Proc.

Pictures of my setup will be made available on demand.

I have seen your inverter setup, and I think courtesy of you I ordered the extractor fan from the same guy you got yours.

I don't doubt you.

Beautiful setup.

I've got a NVM in one of my 3 X260s, albeit an older generation.

I will do a hardware refresh during the Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day 2 ( my preferred shopping time unless it is an emergency purchase).

Unlike you after bad experiences with Toshiba and HP.

I decided to stick to Lenovo's business line of laptops since they were renowed for their longevity.

I have also used Sony VAIOs, still have 2 left that still turn on.

They have become too slow but the motherboards have never given out on me.

With the Toshiba, my brother and I bought at the same time, they both went bad literally a week apart (planned obsolescence).

Got the Lenovos before I got my inverter because of the ability of the battery to last 18 - 20 hours per charge.

Now that I have uninterrupted power, I think I should plan a hardware refresh.

Obnoxious2001:


You where making sense until your closing remark.

That inverter you dey try inform me about I no go buy am from you .

I go buy am from who no put him problem ontop him Market...

Pax vobiscum

No vex

jonescosmos:


You should try a PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD with blisteringly fast 12,400MB/s read and write speeds with an endurance of 1000TBW per 1TB of capacity. That gives you 2000TBW for the 2TB capacity drive, or enough to rewrite 1TB of data every single day for over five years on a compatible mainboard, thank me later.

Files and Bandwidths have grown bigger lately, after my Inverter setup I decided that I will have to do away with my 32TB WDMyCloudEX4100 NAS and 24TB HPE Proliant DL380Gen9 Server. They became too slow for my liking.
Despite having laptops like HP Omen, Lenovo ThinkPad P43s, HP AIO 24-df1270, HP ProBook 450 G8, all with minimum of 2TB NVMe SSD, I still find it slow pulling files from my NAS and HPE Server especially media files.
So I decided It's time to go full blown SSD.

My latest config goes like:

To replace my 32TB WDMyCloudEX4100 NAS I will use:
ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero
LGA 1700(Intel®13th&12th Gen) ATX Gaming Motherboard
Intel Core i9-13900K Gaming Desktop Processor 24 cores (8 P-cores + 16 E-cores) with Integrated Graphics - Unlocked
PCIe 5.0, DDR5,20+1 power Stages,
2.5Gb LAN, WiFi 6E
Bluetooth V5.2,
2X Thunderbolt 4 Ports,
5xM.2, Thunderbolt™ 4/USB4)
5x4TB Seagate FireCuda 540 PCIe NVMe Gen5

To replace my 24TB HPE Proliant DL380Gen9 Server, I will use:
HPE DL380 Gen10 Plus 8LFF CTO Server
2x Intel Xeon-Silver 4314 16 Core Processor
2x 256GB DDR4 3200
16x 1.92GB SAS SSD
2x 10G SFP
etc.

All these items have arrived except the Intel Core i9-13900K Proc.

Pictures of my setup will be made available on demand.

na solar thread we de ooo... btw ate u running gen 5 pcie nvme ssds for home use.. daz an overkill except u have bunch of containers n virtual machine powered up. Sfps com 2 4 dat matter.

Me i like mini systems for my home lab i nor get power resources 4 dose hungry Proliant monsters. Planning on getting one of these i9 10 cores 20 thread pcs with at least 64gb ram configured with 10gb sfps nic running proxmox to connect to my NAS. I might just decide to have a cluster @ home to run kubernetes. 4 me i dont see ssds taking over the traditional hdd space in of storage. No matter how cheap ssds may become.you can check out tiny home project series[url] https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-home-lab-revolution[/url] Enterprise gear and its resources is a no 4 me wen i can achieve more with less.

zeestone99:


No vex

No Wahala..
Afraid dey hold some of us when we see price.. ..
Besides I already know the solution, however I was look for an already made system that can work independently with a preset voltage level.....

I was thinking of coming up with a simple analog comparator circuit, to notify the when it has gotten to 24.5v

But enjoyment too sweet they fit ignore am, so I wanted a cutoff system instead of a notification system.

Obnoxious2001:


No Wahala..
Afraid dey hold some of us when we see price.. ..
Besides I already know the solution, however I was look for an already made system that can work independently with a preset voltage level.....

I was thinking of coming up with a simple analog comparator circuit, to notify the when it has gotten to 24.5v

But enjoyment too sweet they fit ignore am, so I wanted a cutoff system instead of a notification system.

haha but ideally 25v is ok

Obnoxious2001:


No Wahala..
Afraid dey hold some of us when we see price.. ..
Besides I already know the solution, however I was look for an already made system that can work independently with a preset voltage level.....

I was thinking of coming up with a simple analog comparator circuit, to notify the when it has gotten to 24.5v

But enjoyment too sweet they fit ignore am, so I wanted a cutoff system instead of a notification system.

Dem go ignore am o. Enjoyment swt

Obnoxious2001:


No Wahala..
Afraid dey hold some of us when we see price.. ..
Besides I already know the solution, however I was look for an already made system that can work independently with a preset voltage level.....

I was thinking of coming up with a simple analog comparator circuit, to notify the when it has gotten to 24.5v

But enjoyment too sweet they fit ignore am, so I wanted a cutoff system instead of a notification system.

Good morning please can I get your WhatsApp number? , need some guidance about this Solar thing
I’d really appreciate, thanks

I read that the iPhone 15 has a feature that limits battery to just 80% to prolong the life of the battery. I thought this was bad practice years ago, has this changed? If so, can we adapt it to renewable energy?

ojesymsym:
I read that the iPhone 15 has a feature that limits battery to just 80% to prolong the life of the battery. I thought this was bad practice years ago, has this changed? If so, can we adapt it to renewable energy?

Yes you can. Matter of fact this feature has been around for a while. Laptops, Phones, etc has been using this feature at least since 10 years+

I have seen this feature on my Deye Inverter (Disable Floating Charge) which limits the batteries from floating charge..

I can't tell of other inverter vendors though.

Really, I have never seen it on the laptop power management though, maybe some specific laptops.

I thought they said if you do not charge fully consistently, the battery will develop a memory? Disabling floats puts it at around 96% charge with the balance supposed to be to trickle charge

ojesymsym:
I read that the iPhone 15 has a feature that limits battery to just 80% to prolong the life of the battery. I thought this was bad practice years ago, has this changed? If so, can we adapt it to renewable energy?

Lol really. Iphone 15. This apple always lagging behind Samsung always.

Hello guys and good evening. Pleasei just installed my felicity CC and i'm having trouble connecting it to the inverter. I'm using a normal network cable and I've tried both the RS-232 and the RS-485 port on the inverter but it just flashes for 10 seconds and goes off. Please how can i go about this as i dont want to overcharge this battery if both AC and is available?
Inverter is IVPS3524
Charge controller is SCCM8048

Thanks

brightk:
haha but ideally 25v is ok

You tried to me, please send me an email

fegeitok at yandex dot com

Elcapitan0:
Hello guys and good evening. Pleasei just installed my felicity CC and i'm having trouble connecting it to the inverter. I'm using a normal network cable and I've tried both the RS-232 and the RS-485 port on the inverter but it just flashes for 10 seconds and goes off. Please how can i go about this as i dont want to overcharge this battery if both AC and is available?
Inverter is IVPS3524
Charge controller is SCCM8048

Thanks

boss installer na, pay small money before you waste money.

Inverter is IVPS3524 = 24V

Charge controller is SCCM8048 = 48V

microgiant:


boss installer na, pay small money before you waste money.

Inverter is IVPS3524 = 24V

Charge controller is SCCM8048 = 48V

It was installer that did it oh. I never reach to mount myself . The installer did not know about the feature. When it was installed,
the CC auto detected it was a 24V system and to avoid stories that touches, i changed it to 24V myself on the CC settings.

I thought that I was d only one that noticed that closing remarks ooo... wait, why is it that Nigerians pray or hope that something goes sour or even worse whenever their review/opinion is not considered or their marker not patronised

Obnoxious2001:


You where making sense until your closing remark.

That inverter you dey try inform me about I no go buy am from you .

I go buy am from who no put him problem ontop him Market...

Pax vobiscum

I thought, I was the only one that saw his closing remark. That's ARROGANCE

Obnoxious2001:


You where making sense until your closing remark.

That inverter you dey try inform me about I no go buy am from you .

I go buy am from who no put him problem ontop him Market...

Pax vobiscum

ojesymsym:
Really, I have never seen it on the laptop power management though, maybe some specific laptops.

I thought they said if you do not charge fully consistently, the battery will develop a memory? Disabling floats puts it at around 96% charge with the balance supposed to be to trickle charge

Many have it easily on the power management some you have to do it from the bios.

Laptop makers like ASUS makes it easy for all classes of their laptops. While some it is more common in their Gaming Laptop series.

WE BUY DEAD/SCRAP BATTERIES!!!

We also buy off scrap/dead deep cycle batteries from any state to Lagos ( & Condition applies) ..

You could make money from your dead or swollen batteries.


12v 200a ..... N42,000
12v 150a.......N31,000
12v 100a.......N21,000
2v 500a ........N9,000

Free pickup within some parts of Lagos mainland but Shared cost logistics within Lagos Island environs . . If outside Lagos state , send the scrap batteries to your nearby Lagos park & get your payment alert immediately after confirmatory remarks from me with the transport company manager / secretary or driver shared logistics cost depending on scrap battery quantity) ..

Scrap batteries could also be traded in for brand new battery replacements.... Prices might be reviewed from time to time


,
Smartcell global services
CALL LINE::::: 081-350-31951
WHATSAPP::: 081-703-85620

Me and @obnoxious2001 have settled our small rift less than 24hrs but bad belle people will bring it up, y r u people like this.

@obnoxious2001 come and see something o. I think sey we don settle our small fight. U no tell me sey we Neva settle na. Shebi I don sey mk u no vex.

Hello House,

I want to bring the notice of everyone here to beware of a solar installer @zeestone. I have always noticed that he has dubious traits but I kept managing because there is a popular saying that the devil you know is better than the angel you do not know.

I ll start from the very beginning, this is a long read so please bear with me.

I was introduced to Zeestone by niyi as far back as 5 years ago. I negotiated installation costs with him back then for a solar install for my house and he came to benin to do the install. He quoted me for a roll of 6mm dc cables along with other accessories which I paid for and when he came to Benin, he couldn't present the roll of 6 mm cables. He had apparently bought 20 meters believing it would be enough and not refunded my money. To ensure that the job progressed, I decided to let it fly. My concern was that he did a good job.

I have had numerous issues with the install but that is a story for another day.

I then had issues with my old felicity inverter which had served over 4 years and it was time for a change. I ed Zeestone and he recommended a sorotec inverter. He charged me close to 400,000 naira and he sent the inverter. I cannot say 100% that the inverter was new because the carton had been opened. From the first week, i noticed that inverter was displaying errors, bus over voltage, and touch screen was always going blank. I complained to him for over 6 months and he kept recommending all sorts of things until the inverter suddenly packed up. I sent it to him and he claimed to have fixed it under warranty. Upon returning the inverter, I continued to have bus over voltage errors along with other errors. Only the touch screen seemed to have been resolved. I opted to just forget about it and keep managing the inverter with thought that I would buy a new one whenever it decides to pack up again.

Now, to the issue that has broken the camels back. one week ago, I ordered for 6mm 4 core cables from zeestone against my better judgement, I had already reached out to a couple other reputable people and they didn't have in stock so I was forced to go back to him.

I paid for 50 Meters according to the agreement. Upon sending to Benin, the installer said the cable was incomplete. I went to the site and saw that they had to change the original plan for the trunking so the cable will be enough. I called Zeestone and expressed my misgiven, he claimed that they sent 50 yards and not meters. Why would I pay for meters and you would send yards? That is the first red flag. Eventually, I pacified the owner of the project and said it may have been an error. After install, we needed to change the borehole cable that goes into the well so we decided to order another 50 meters. This time, zeestone made it clear it was in yards. I also sang it over and over again that he should ensure he confirms the measurement before sending the cable to Benin.

I received the cable on Monday, left it in my car and took it to the site this morning. I wanted to witness the usage because I did not want stories again. They pulled the solar borehole pump and attached the new cable. Alas, the cable couldn't even cover the 8 pipes for the borehole. At that point, I asked them to pull the borehole and I went to bring my measuring tape, I measured the cable sent and it was 126 feet which would be 42 yards. That meant my previous assertion was correct and he reduced the quantity bought.

I called him and was very angry. I sent videos to him on the measurement. I had specifically asked him to measure the cable before sending to Benin and for reasons best known to him, he decided not to and sent it anyways. I told him clearly that I would take this issue to nairaland and zeestone flared up. He said there was nothing he could do about it.

He insulted me, said everything he has been doing for me is a favor, he fixed my inverter for 70K according to him. This is an inverter that went bad after 5 months under warranty. There was nothing he did not say