[OnePlus 3T Questions & Answers] purplepenguin:
Or as bricked as these Qualcomm devices CAN be?

Hey all,

The TL;DR is basically where the list starts

I was running Blu's TWRP v45, the latest PureFusion, Blu's latest Custom kernel, had OB15 firmware underneath. I had been SO USED to simply downloading the newest firmware from kamilmirza's AFH page and just flashing it + it being totally fine that I did it without thinking for OB16. I wasn't too worried because about a week ago I had flashed the unofficial Oreo Lineage and it worked just fine! Plus, I just assumed if it died I could just restore a backup or re-flash the older OB. But as soon as I flashed the new firmware/modem by itself this time on an otherwise perfectly running device, I only saw the OnePlus splash screen. No booting, no access to recovery, no NOTHIN.

I tried flashing the beta TWRP version afterward via fastboot but no dice. Also tried temporary booting via fastboot to it, flashing Blu's again, booting to that. Everything the same result. Splash screen & nothing more. I then went to the extent of trying to format all the partitions and flash a boot.img or do a "-w update" or "flashall" command via fastboot. Because everything out in the universe is a recovery-flashable-zip, it seems like there's no way I can flash the necessary OTA stuff to bring it back to life!

My only remaining idea is getting this damn unbrick tool to work (duhh). I can see the Qualcomm HS-USB QDLoader 9008 in device manager after doing the Vol Up (only) and plugging the cable in. BUT the MSMDownloadTool just cannot see the device. Not in bootloader, not in the weird Vol-Up/cable state. [This is with Qualcomm drivers QUD.WIN.1.1 Installer-10037.3 Setup.exe, the official OnePlus drivers, ADB & Fastboot installed.]

Sorry for long explanation. In the end, what I'm left with is:

Blank formatted partitions (I hope... I'm not even positive they wound up formatted from the fastboot commands)

Fastboot is detected, but no ADB devices are found

Can get to bootloader, but nothing else

No recovery access - Flashing beta akhilnarang Oreo recovery does nothing. Flashing stock recovery does nothing. Flashing Blu_Spark recovery does nothing. (The fastboot commands succeed though each time somehow)

So far the only suggestion I've received is trying the MSMDownloadTool/unbrick process on another computer.

Does anyone have ANY ideas? From my experience, it seems like what might help me would be if a folder with the specific partition images existed for the OTAs, like how Google offers. (boot.img, recovery.img, user-data.img, system and so on). Am I wrong in thinking that? OnePlus has told me this simply does not exist and cannot give me anything like that (don't know why, when they already offer all the OTA flashables...)

PS - OnePlus support just absolutely refuses to even let me communicate to a "level 2" representative to ask a couple of the more technical questions about it. I can't understand why. They are insisting I start an RMA and send it for repair. They even initially scheduled a time for me to talk to higher level rep and then thought up a reason to cancel it via email an hour or so later...

Edit: Just in case the thread gets large and people don't read further posts, this is using:

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Test mode for the driver signing is enabled. Have the watermark bottom right of desktop

It's with the stock DASH cable

Tried multiple ports

Unfortunately it just doesn't show up in MSM at all, even with hitting 'enumerate' button multiple times

Tried starting the tool BEFORE the device is plugged in, as well as after

This is what Device Manager shows (attached) but just nothing in MSM all the way up & down

HOW IT GOT SOLVED:

At the end of the day, I had to fight and convince OnePlus support to grant me a remote session with Level 2 Support.

(Attached final image) These two password protected RAR files had almost identical tools as the Unbrick tutorial on XDA.

The major difference was that MSMDownloadTool was version 3.0.8 ***does anyone have this version??*** I can't get into these RARs. The 3.0 tool circulating did not work for me. We might need the newer version as time goes on?? Otherwise, the process was identical.

Unfortunately, the image they used was for 7.1.1. I had to unlock the bootloader and after doing that and getting OB15 & the RR build I wanted, etc, I then realized my phone was force-encrypted as well.

The only toolkit that worked for force decrypting once everything else worked was:

OnePlus_3_3T_5_64bit_TOOLKIT_by_Neisor

Finally, something like 3 clean flashes later, we Gucci.

Thanks for the attempted help to those that did! Hopefully this can help someone else.