Meeting Total Liberia's GM at our office ✍

We were honoured with a visit by Total's General Manager at our office a few weeks ago. We were connected through friends we made with folks who are working at the Salala Rubber Plantation, who in turn we met at our friends' birthday party at Libassa Ecolodge (the owners and managers of Libassa Ecolodge, in fact).

That's a good example of how so many new clients were added to our profile list. In fact, our friends at Salala Rubber Plantation also introduced us to their sister company, LAC (Liberian Agricultural Company), with whom we got the opportunity to repair a server that was damaged after a lightening strike. 

The meeting with Total's General Manager was a good moment to connect with one of the world's major oil companies. The GM is extremely professional, humble and kind. He was happy to learn about our experiences and expertise. 

During our chat we learned from him that despite the substantive expansion that Total has accomplished in Liberia, they are operating at a loss because of the currency issue. He also said growth is extremely slow at the moment but Total has committed itself to stay in the country for the long run. 

He asked us to provide a full profile to his procurement team. 

By the way, our predecessor company, NLTC, was doing regular maintenance work for Total. 

1 year at NATC

I am happy to inform all of you that I am completing exact one year in this company on 17 October 2016. My 1st project on build an 80 feet tower for installing internet equipment at Africa Heart Wood Zannah Town. When I joined this company a year back, I was totally new in this company's culture and it was a hard time to match with it.

It was you all who had taken pains to teach me the culture and working style of this company. Because of your strong support and my CEO Ms. Farzana Rasheed and Chief Operation Mr. Haresh Karamchandani. Who had guided me time to time in my work, I could successfully complete this one year period in the company.

I am sure you all will continue to provide your support and guidance, which will help me in performing the Best in near future.

I feel proud to complete one successful year with great satisfaction. Yes, this is my 367th day as an employee. First of all, I thank God for all the good things he gave in my first year and my fantastic team members whom I work with. They are of great support and fun to be with.

I, being a very optimistic person, hope that the coming years will be full of learning, challenges and fun. One last thing, not to forget to mention is that, I always feel that, I am updated with the moving technology. Thanks NATC management and staff.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Farman Elahi, IT Technician

How to rebuild Canon iR 2420 CEXV14 Drum unit

Our client Monrovia City Hall brought a printer Canon ImageRUNNER 2420 with CEXV14 drum toner spots and light print issues.

 

This is one of the most common printer issues and at one time or another we’ve all sent a print command to the printer, only to be left frustrated and irritated when the printer prints something like this faded printout. 

There are many causes of light or faded prints. But in this printer the issue is due to a damaged drum. 

 

In this blog post i will tell you how to rebuild a printer drum unit and how to replace drum or change the roller in drum unit. If your printer has ink but prints faded or printing too light, we’re going to help you to find out why and help you to fix it and we’ll do it. You don’t need to buy a new printer!

How to rebuild Canon iR 2420 CEXV14 Drum unit:  General causes of print quality problems are given in the checklist below, followed by specific samples of common print quality problems. If the listed solutions do not work, call for help.

 

1. Remove the drum holding pin with electronic needle nose plier.

2. Remove the old drum. 

3. Remove the charge roller.

4. Remove the white charge roller support clip.

5. Remove the drum wiper blade by removing the 2 screws.

6. Cleanout all the reaming toner from the cartridge.

7. Reinstall drum wiper blade and the 2 screws.

8. Reinstall the charge roller support clip.

9. Clean and Reinstall the charge roller

10. Lubricate the drum with toner or the wiper blade may damage it.

11. Install the new drum securing it in place with the drum holding pin.

12. Rotate the drum.

Note:

1. If toner is visible on the charge roller dry wipe it with a soft cloth to prevent copy quality issues. 2. Clean the Charge roller with water and soft cloth and dry wipe in one direction only.
3. Be careful not to damage the recovery blade that is located to the wiper blade. If this blade is bent in any way the cartridge will leak.  Thanks for reading. We are glad that NATC finds a solution for all their IT problems.

Prepared By: Farman Elahi, IT Technician 

LIBERIA AGRICULTURE COMPANY HP PROLAINT 360 G8 SERVER NOT BOOTING

Dear reader,

NATC has proven to be the one stop IT solution center. We are continuing to deliver customers satisfaction like no one does and through this means we are adding new clients based on customers’ recommendations. We recently provided tech support to the second largest rubber plantation in Liberia: The Liberia Agriculture Company (LAC) in Grand Bass County. 

On the 29^th of September, our Head of Operations received a call from the General Manager of LAC to report a failure in powering on their data server HP ProLiant 360p Gen8, running Windows Server 2008 Data Center. The in-house IT officers assumed a power surge caused by a the lightning strike had damaged the server. A team of two senior staff, Hardware Specialist Farman Elahi and myself Daniel Collins, Software and Network Administrator, were dispatched with a new 460w power supply unit and software for troubleshooting incase the problem could be power supply replacement. We arrived the same day at around 5:00 O’clock PM due to the bumpy road condition.

The LAC IT team welcomed us and we were introduced to all the senior management staff. We provided an overview of our company and ourselves. They later took us to their staff canteen for snacks and fresh air after a long day of driving. After lunch, we proceed to the server room and started our work. We checked the two power supplies and they were all working well, but the server was still not powering on. We carefully started a one-on-one check of all the ICs and MOPET ICs as well then found out they were lot of damaged ones on the motherboard that prevented power or current to flow from the power supply to these components to power on the server. That took us up to 11:55PM. We could not work on repairs on the motherboard on site so decided to inform the client to take the server to our lab in Monrovia. The next morning we had a short meeting with the senior management and the IT officers. As technical as the other guys were, they agreed to our request and gave us a go-ahead. Before leaving we inspected the electrical grounding system and lightning arrestor. We noticed that lightning arrestor and grounding of the equipment was not properly done.

We arrived with the server late on a Saturday evening back to Monrovia along with the In-house IT Head. We could not do anything as it was close of office hours. Early Monday morning we were able to thoroughly check the server's motherboard in our lab with our tools and equipment and concluded that it would be difficult to do any professional or guaranteed repairs on the motherboard as there was so much damage. These diagnostics were done in the midst of their IT officer so he understood exactly our next step on replace the motherboard.

The information was shared with LAC General Manager and we were given the green light to order a new motherboard with same part number from our USA partner and prepare material for the installation of the lightning arrestor and grounding. The order was placed the same day and expected an arrival over the weekend. 

It arrived on the 6^th of October. I received a WhatsApp message from our Head of Operations about the arriver of the said item. I got prepared for the next morning's trip to Grand Bassa.    I was picked up from my Junction with the team including our Head of Operations that Saturday morning and arrived at noon and immediately starting on replacing the motherboard. The important parts such as Network Interface Card, Power Supplies, Heat Sink and RAID Array Card were extracted from the old Motherboard and inserted on the new Motherboard to secure the existing configurations and data files. 

The Server was powered on and came on initially with ‘’Power Supply Mismatch’’ error. I was like gosh!!!!! Another problem again? But you know, there’s always a solution especially when it comes to IT; either repair or replace in this scenario. A critical thinking was done quickly and decided to remove the redundant power supply unit and left the server one supply. It boots up successfully with all configurations and data in place. We contacted their Home office to login remotely from Switzerland to confirm it everything was ok from their side, too. He then confirms ‘’Yes’’. 

He suggested that we do a backup immediately on a 4TB external hard drive. After completion of the Server, we had a good lunch and proceeded back to site to continue the installation of the new lightning arrestor. 

Installation of the pipe.

The Company provided us few men to help with digging of 5’ deep pit and prefabricated 30’galvanized pipe to weld the lightning arrestor on top of the pipe securely and planted into the pit and filled with concrete mixture. The tower was secured with 3 cable attached to the ground. 3 more pits were dug and 3x5’ x 37.5mm thick copper rods were inserted into these pits and connected the lightning arrestor with a 25mm on insulated cable. The resistance test was 0.3 Ohm, this was a good value.  

These pits were filled with fertile soil. The old arrestor was reading 0.0 Ohm. They understood that the old one was not working and should not be relied on. We also installed a 10000VA Voltage Stabilizer and instructed their in-house electrician on how to connect the server rack and other IT equipment due the time as we did not plan to sleep on site. They have confirmed that it is connected and working well.

The customer was very excited with our quick intervention and solution. Other vendors had advised that they should replace the server and by replacing the server they would have lost all data because the hard drives were configured with RAID protection. These drives cannot be read in any servers or backup equipment.

NATC always provides the best solution for its clients/customers that why that’s why we remain the one stop IT solution company in Liberia running for years with experience management and staff.

Thanks for following our technical blogs and hope you enjoy reading!

Prepared By:

Daniel Collins

Senior IT Technician