[Android Software Development] veryspecialagent:
First off, after all of the different janky program, driver, and version downloads of all of these different fixes, I'm fairly certain both the Chinese and Indian governments are now using my laptop to spy on each other while some Russian group is sifting through all of the p**n site cookies hoping I dropped a credit card somewhere. And some of those fixes are 2-5 years old and the files/tools they say to use no longer exist at the links they put on their posts.

Anyway...

I've been on this for cumulative 9 hours over two nights, and I'm no closer to a fix.

After reinstalling a QFIL or QPST driver for Windows 10, a process that also reinstalled QPST, I decided to find and pull up a log to see if there was anything behind the "Firehose fail." Everything is doing good until this:

[ICODE]00:35:12: INFO: Looking for file 'cache.img'
00:35:12: DEBUG: 1. Calling stat(C:\Users\ryans\Desktop\ZTE_Max_XL_NMF26F_N9560_21082018_7.1.1_QFIL\Firmware\cache.img')
00:35:12: DEBUG: 2. Calling fopen('C:\Users\ryans\Desktop\ZTE_Max_XL_NMF26F_N9560_21082018_7.1.1_QFIL\Firmware\cache.img') with AccessMode='rb'
00:35:12: DEBUG: Trying get filesize, calling fseek()
00:35:12: DEBUG: Found 'C:\Users\ryans\Desktop\ZTE_Max_XL_NMF26F_N9560_21082018_7.1.1_QFIL\Firmware\cache.img' (10682660 bytes)
00:35:12: DEBUG: 2. Calling fopen('C:\Users\ryans\Desktop\ZTE_Max_XL_NMF26F_N9560_21082018_7.1.1_QFIL\Firmware\cache.img') with AccessMode='rb'
00:35:12: DEBUG: Trying get filesize, calling fseek()
00:35:12: DEBUG: ==================================================================================
00:35:12: DEBUG: ==================================================================================
00:35:12: INFO: Looking for file 'system.img'
00:35:12: DEBUG: 1. Calling stat(C:\Users\ryans\Desktop\ZTE_Max_XL_NMF26F_N9560_21082018_7.1.1_QFIL\Firmware\system.img')
00:35:12: DEBUG: 2. Calling stat(system.img')

(_)
__ ____ _ _ __ _ __ _ _ __ __ _
\ \ /\ / / _` | '__| '_ \| | '_ \ / _` |
\ V V / (_| | | | | | | | | | | (_| |
\_/\_/ \__,_|_| |_| |_|_|_| |_|\__, |
__/ |
|___/

00:35:12: WARNING: find_file:6641 Couldn't find the file 'system.img', returning NULL

_____
| ___|
| |__ _ __ _ __ ___ _ __
| __| '__| '__/ _ \| '__|
| |__| | | | | (_) | |
\____/_| |_| \___/|_|

00:35:12: {ERROR: handleProgram:7403 'system.img' not found. You could possibly try --notfiles=system.img,OtherFileToSkip.bin (note, exiting since you specified --noprompt)[/ICODE]

It's lying. system . img most certainly is there in the folder with all of the rest of the firmware files that go with it. And EVERYTHING I've downloaded and been running during all of this, I put on the desktop (as opposed to drive D, where downloads get put).

Thoughts? I'm going to redownload the firehose and the firmware (the latter from a different site, which is difficult since I couldn't find an official ZTE firmware site.

I don't know which project I'm working on is more frustrating. This, the Moto g7 Play I had rooted and working fine until I forgot the pattern lock, hard reset, and can't get root to work again, or the Stylo 3, which says all pattern unlock attempts are wrong, but since it's an older phone and on Nougat I'm trying to find a way around it.