[Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Questions and Answers] krabman:
Cliff notes for what will be a super long post... I'm going to respond to some things above me here and I'm getting daily PMs for flashing instructions so I'm going to recap that in the latter portion of this post for those that asked so I don't have to keep retyping it for people one at a time. Those instructions will be super over the top in details because as I learned the other day, some of you are not native English speakers and the extra details help.

As to above comments I'm confident that formatting does not cause problems as suggested and it may in fact help. I say this because I have flashed 3 roms without ever losing my OEM unlock switch for even one second from the time of the first successful flash and each one included a format. That was 13 days ago gents. Been in and out of recovery a number of times and done all the normal stuff we do with a few exceptions. I have not flashed a CSC, I have not flashed a kernal, I have not made any flashes which modify the bootloader. On the other side of the coin as described above I have flashed the BL and CP as part of the light rom installation without any issue. I've also flashed a magisk module that gave functionality to the bixby button. I flashed a navigation bar mod on ketan but I didn't like it so I didn'f flash it on light rom.

Someone above had said that Ketan killed his installation when it rebooted to recovery to install busybox and what I get out of that is that he didn't have a successful flash in the first place because he should have had an OEM unlock switch in the on position from the time he booted but did not. I did. Both my Ketan installations went fine and included the trip to the recovery to flash busybox.

To give this some perspective reading zerenx's post above makes him the 7th person that I know of that is (was in your case zerenx, sorry to hear about the hardware issue :( ) puttering along just fine. They had the OEM unlock from the first minute and it was in the on postion. They can go to recovery, they can reboot, they could do all these things immediately. I did a whole bunch of flashing before we even figured out there was a timer involved here and at first I though it was possible that when I finally succeeded it was because there was something altered by all that flashing. That is not the case. When you have a half dozen people who succeeded and all have different situations entering in you have to figure that we do have what appears to be a working flash method, that it wasn't just a random series of events that caused what should have been a fail to be a successful flash for me alone.

Lets cover a few things we think we know. It appears fairly solid that if you do not flash a rom and only root you will not have an OEM unlock switch when you start up. In this situation you should not leave system for one week until it shows up. A number of people are playing in that sand box now and one has just reported in that once the button comes back things appear to work. I'm hopeful we'll see more reinforcement on that soon as we are just now getting people to a week of system time.

It appears that when the OEM unlock switch is not visible it is also in the off state at least some of the time and there does appear to be a correlation with knox causing this behavior, we'll get back to that. Anyone that flashes a rom which removes the switch from the GUI should wait at least a week before they leave system. There are some people playing in that sandbox as well but none have reported back yet. IMO better to flash a rom that does not hide it to be able to verify it, at least if you want the best hope of avoiding trouble. It also appears that only those who go on to flash a rom have the OEM unlock switch visible immediately. This is likely related to the removal of knox which may be getting queried by Samsung servers at boot. In other words lose knox while the switch is visible and not being set to off status when it isn't visible and the timer is not reset to off for a week. None of this is tested, it just fits the facts we have now.

That's it for the random stuff, about installing the rom. I'm aware that there is a lot of redundancy and steps which should not be needed. This was originally conceived as a kitchen sink, throw anything at it that may somehow derail the binaries error process. You probably don't need the resets except for the last which is good practice for any new rom installation. You shouldn't need to flash verity as it's included in both SU and magisk. This process involves doing those things though because we don't know enough yet to know what to skip. For those that want the highest likelihood of success, follow the process in every detail. I would ask anyone that wants to try something different to please consider following this process exactly except remove one one step you feel is superfluous. In that way we could remove extra steps that are proven to be without merit.

This process BTW was the result of not doing what some had already proven didn't work in front of me and by trying to do what others had suggested might help. I did not come up with this concept on my own. Once you start do not leave recovery. Do not put your sims back in the phone until the other side of the installation process. Whatever you do is on your head, I'm not responsible for any adverse results. You are choosing to follow these instructions and are responsible for the results of your actions. Here then are ridiculously detailed instructions...

1 Download TWRP, verity, magisk or super SU, the rom of your choice that does not hide the OEM unlock toggle

2 Transfer those files to a micro SD card.

3 Remove your sim(s) and insert the micro SD.

4 Go into developer and verify that your OEM switch is visible and in the on position. If it is not visible do not proceed until you have it.

5 Shut down the phone.

6 Boot into downloader by holding vol down/bix/power

7 Open odin and place the TWRP tar in AP

8 Connect the phone

9 Place your mouse curser over the start button on odin but DO NOT start it.

10 Press and hold the vol up/bix/power and do not release them until the entire flash is done and you are in TWRP.

11 While holding thse buttons use a spare finger to press the mouse button which you already placed over start in odin. The flash will go by quickly.

12 You are now in TWRP, swipe right to allow modification.

13 Select wipe.

14 Select format.

15 Type yes.

16 Go back to main menu and select reboot menu.

17 Select REBOOT RECOVERY, do not go to system.

18 When back in TWRP after rebooting recovery select wipe at main menu.

19 Do a factory reset.

20 Go back to main menu.

21 Select install.

22. Flash the verity and encryption disabler.

23. Go back to main men.

24. Select wipe.

25 Do a factory reset.

26 Go back to main menu.

27 Select install.

28 Choose either magisk or SU to flash and install it.

29 Go back to main menu

30 Select wipe

31 Do a factory reset.

32 At main menu select install and flash your rom IF IT DOES NOT include any lower level flash for the BL, CP etc. If it does include those things do not leave recovery yet, go to step 37.

33 Go back to main menu

34 Select wipe.

35 Factory reset.

36 Reboot into system. You should be able to connect your wireless network and go through the setup process. Do not reboot until you have completed setup, enabled developer options, verified that you have an OEM unlock switch and that it is on. If it is on you should be able to reboot, go into recovery, etc. You should not flash a CSC, kernal, anything that alters the lower level firmware.

37 You are here because you are going to flash a lower level file as part of you rom, right now that's going to be light rom and you will need to flash the BL and CP.

38 You should still be in TWRP but are now going to leave it. Select reboot from the main menu.

39 Reboot into downloader.

40 If you still have odin open, reset it.

41 Place BL in BL in odin.

42 Connect phone.

43 Untick reboot in options.

44 Flash BL.

45 Reset odin

46 Put CP in CP.

47 Connect phone.

48 Untick reboot in options.

49 Flash CP.

50 Reset odin.

51 Put TWRP in AP

52 DO NOT uncheck the reboot option, you now want it to reboot after the TWRP flash. Flash TWRP exactly as you did above by holding the buttons while flashing as described in step 9 and on from there to guarantee you boot into TWRP and not system.

53 You will now continue to follow each step exactly as you did before. Again. All the way up to step 31. At that point you will be at the rom installation stage. As you now have the BL and CP flashed you will continue on with steps 32 through 36. You are done.

54. Do not place sims back in phone till setup is complete. As soon as it is done you need to enable developer and ensure you have a visible OEM unlock switch and that it is on. If it is you should be good to go. If it is not do not reboot or leave system until it comes back.

A couple tips... Sometimes odin doesn't want to flash multiple files and after you reset it it doesn't see the phone. Reboot your PC and it should work. Leave the phone in download, never leave it except to go directly to recovery. Dont leave recovery until you have completed every step.

Last, if I've forgotten something please let me know. A lot of typing here and it is easy to miss a step. Please study up a little bit on this and make sure you understand what it is you're going to do before you do it.