[OnePlus 8T Questions & Answers] Frustrated_AF:
Ok, first off let me say thank you in advance. I had the Oneplus 7t and (Tmo) and played hell with it trying to root until I found that MSMTool and then had a hayday with it. Now I have the 8t, I have been waiting for a working TWRP because I really like TWRP and I really like Magisk. As of yesterday my stock Rom was fully rooted with TWRP, Magisk, and busybox. It had been that way for several days with no glitches or errors, so obviously bootloader unlocked, phone is carrier unlocked and got my oneplus unlock token last tuesday (5 days ago). On my 7t after trying several ROM's I settled on Havoc-OS so with my 8t I was just going to go straight to Havoc-OS even thought I might try messing around with a kernel update at some point in the near future. BUT...... somehow I have angered the Android God's and am being punished. I have been through much frustration in the past with things Android, have always been able to figure it out thanks to XDA, but today I must humble myself, finally make an account and ask for help. To the best of my recollection here is what I have done with the results.

But before that my current state is, I can boot to TWRP recovery, fastboot, bootloader, EDL and all that but I wiped partitions prior to starting the flashing process so right now I can not boot to system.

I started at techsphinx.com/smartphones/install-havoc-os/ It is a very straighforward guide. but gave error 7, which I believe is wring device error so I checked and it's the kebab havoc like it should be (I think, I'll get to that in a moment) so I look it up and everything says to get in to the file and find the update binary and update script and edit the update script, blah blah EXCEPT that in my copy of havoc-os in the called out directory I have different files. Mine are otacert and metadata. two completely different scenarios. otacert is a binary file while metadata when opened with notepad gives this text:

ota-property-files=payload_metadata.bin:1784:116801,payload.bin:1784:1262105569,payload_properties.txt:1262107411:156,care_map.pb:737:1000,metadata:69:621

ota-required-cache=0

ota-streaming-property-files=payload.bin:1784:1262105569,payload_properties.txt:1262107411:156,care_map.pb:737:1000,metadata:69:621

ota-type=AB

post-build=OnePlus/havoc_kebab/OnePlus8T:11/RQ3A.210805.001.A1/eng.kshiti.20210826.065117:userdebug/release-keys

post-build-incremental=eng.kshiti.20210826.065117

post-sdk-level=30

post-security-patch-level=2021-08-05

post-timestamp=1629960471

pre-device=OnePlus8T,OnePlus9R

I can't remember when was supposed to be remarked in the updater-script file but there is nothing like that in this file. That is all that is present in this directory, META-INF/com/google/android

Everything I try to push to the device errors out before it completes with a broken pipe error, adb sideload is similar in that it won't finish the transfer to the phone. Now anything I try to do in TWRP gives me error can't mount partition_name. I had a nandroid backup but I can't use it because partitions can't be mounted.

I wondered if it was the tmobile variant thing so I tried the msm tool for switching tmobile to universal edition first but I can't get msm tool to work in my device manager the now soft-bricked device shows up as the QS BULK device which is not the right one so I install the automatic driver installer for the qualcomm usb drivers, no effect so I follow how to install manually and windows will not let me and tells me it's likely that the driver file is corrupt or has been tampered with.

My frustration level right now is just before the part where I take a hammer to the phone and make as many small pieces as I can.

The state of my phone right now is that I can't even get it into edl mode because I can't get it to turn off. reboot to power off, holding volume up and power both leave it to when I push both volumes in the screen comes on and I am in bootloader mode. I am at a complete and utter loss.

I need my phone for work tomorrow