Galaxy Note i717 is an amazing phone, but you can do much more after rooting it. For example, you can install apps to underclock or overclock it. You must root in order to install custom CWM which is required if you are going to install a custom ROM on your Note. To enable tethering on i717, you will need to root first so that you can install Titanium backup on it. Here are the steps on how to root your Galaxy Note i717 phone.
1. Install USB Driver for Windows (http://www.samsung.com/us/support/ow…SGH-I717ZBAATT).
2. In order to Odin you have to put your phone into download mode. To do so, turn off your phone, hold VOLUME DOWN and POWER buttons, once you see the prompt
to put your phone into download mode press VOLUME UP.
3. To get Odin to work, start Odin and load the .tar, etc BEFORE plugging in your phone. Then put your phone into download mode and connect the USB. Once you plug in your phone the program will show device in COM port.
4. Root your phone. Two methods.
a. Flash counter raising: see here (http://forum.xda-developers.com/show….php?t=1504218)
b. Flash counter intact: see here (http://forum.xda-developers.com/show….php?t=1518962)
5. Clockworkmod recovery
a. Non-touch version: http://forum.xda-developers.com/show….php?t=1526431
b. Touch version: http://forum.xda-developers.com/show….php?t=1584576
6. To put your phone into recovery.
a. Turn off your phone, hold both VOLUME UP and VOLUME DOWN and POWER. After you feel the first vibration, let go of the POWER button but keep holding the VOLUME UP and VOLUME DOWN. You should go into CWM assume it’s flashed correctly.
7. First thing you do after installing CWM is to create a nandroid backup before you try to flash anything so you can restore if anything goes wrong.
8. Also you should check the md5sum of the rom, kernel, theme, etc file size before you flash to verify that downloaded file is correct and complete. To do that you can use any md5sum apps from the market such as this one. Some devs don’t post md5sum info, so you have to ask for it.
9.Why clear cache, dalvik cache, and wipe data/factory reset before flashing a new rom?
a. cache: main data cache is used by the Android OS at runtime to write temporary files for specific reasons. You want to clear this out when you try a new ROM so it doesn’t re-used that cached data.
b. dalvik cache: when you install an application on Android, it performs some modifications and optimizations on that application’s dex file. It then caches the resulting odex (optimized dex) file in the /data/dalvik-cache folder, so that it doesn’t have to perform the optimization process every time it loads an application. This is important if you flash a new kernel.
c. As a general rule you do all of above when flashing a new rom.