[Galaxy Note GT-N7000 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] fwelland:
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So here is a play by play that cased the problem in first place (I still don't know what specific action caused this issue):

Very Late Oct. I Pre-order GNOTE from Negri

Ships and arrives on 11/9! Yay! Drop in my ATT SIM (2GB SmartPhone service); configure APN and away we go.

Works great! I show off. I install apps. I read XDA. I see cool stuff to try. I try cool stuff.

Somewhere along the way I see the T-Mobile and 1700 thread and think cool "what does mine say?".

Somewhere along the way I learn about ODIN no-flashie and yellow triangle.

Somewhere along the way I read up about rooting.

I check out recovery to see what it says about my kernel and the yellow triangle. I hard re-boot (hold power key) instead of choosing reboot option in recovery mode (if there was one).

I check out the service menu, just to see what was there. I *never* change anything (or never meant too) nor do I ever hit 'cancel' or quit. I just use the 'back' softkey to leave the service menu.

Install Titanium Backup, notice it needs root; contemplate rooting....

polish carrier "Plus" un-removable bloatware was set to auto-update so a bunch of their stuff updates. It annoys me, but seems harmless and note that I would use TB to remove after i get around to rooting...

Poke on WWW/xda and others to find a good way to migrate all my SMS & MMS from SGT to GNOTE (Why is that soo hard?)

Used Mybackup free, which seems like it had good process for this and email the backup zip from SGT to my gmail. (PS: The back up part is easy and free, but you can't restore if you don't pay...I didn't know that until after this adventure....)

gmail on note won't download the zip. I fixed this on sgt, how did I do that? Ah was it 'Download all'? Install on gnote, no worky. Maybe I need to restart a bunch of stuff to get download all working. Heck I will just reboot. This was early on 11/13.

Ok reboot. Crud still can't download zip. Tinker tinker and think to my self " why didn't I just save to my nas from SGT and pull over to note... Hey wait, I don' t have any cell signal."

This thread begin not too long after that....

Now here is the things that I did over a couple of days that finally fixed it (sorry, I don't know what specific combo of steps fixed it):

freak out, but then regain composure.

scour WWW, xda, etc. Notice some others with similar problems.

pull sim out and test on other phones; clean sim, re-insert, re-try. Rinse and repeat several times.

Begin this thread.

Realize that I might have to mod my new GNOTE and think: "No problem, I didn't want to start modding my gnote this soon, but this forces me too. Besides I don't like all the polish carrier bloat anyway and need/want root.... "

Root and CWM, first using "Simple Method" at end of first post here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1329360

As expected, that didn't change anything but was pre-requisite to flashing KK1 ROM from this post: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1342797

flashed KK1 via CWM. Restart and re-config phone: no dice. Tinker Tinker Tinker, begin to worry abit, think about RMA at negri and if they' d squawk about a modded phone that is is RMA'ed.

Factory reset -> "Settings->Privacy->Factory Reset". No changes.

Notice that service menu is empty?? (* # * # 1 9 7 3 2 8 6 4 0 # * # * on key pad). It is almost like there is no 'cell hardware' installed.

Go thru the SIM pull & re-insert drill again. Having wishful thoughts that my 3G sim; which is at least 4 years old, may not 'taste' right to the GNOTE (despite it working just fine for 3 days). Finally locate a non-iPhone ATT SIM to test -- didn't work. Notice this new sim fits 'tighter' and seem slightly bigger. Should I get a new SIM? Put a layer of scotch tape over the non-contact side of sim with the idea that it may make it tighter while inserted and encourage better contact....grabbing at some straws here...Nothing...

Tried the KJ6 Modem from here: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1344759

No CWM on KK1 rom. But used 'Quick Boot' that installed with rom to boot into recovery (android recovery 3e). Try to flash the modem zip from above but get a signature fail issue.

Thinking that maybe modem will flash with CWM recovery instead of android recovery.

apply 'already-rooted' script from the root thread above (using the KK1 version of the script)

perms denied!?!? But I am rooted??

I then just run 'not-rooted-yet' -- zerdlings did find their target. Success rooted and reboot. I wasn't expecting any changes yet but did some tests anyways -- nope no 3g/cell -- everything else works well. Try to hide this problem from my wife, who feels the whole world should have an 'I' before it; and eagerly looks forward to paying an annual tithe to some fruit company in California.

With KK1 and CWM in place I flash KJ6 modem from above. Flash works (or doesn't say it didn't work)! But doesn't change anything: still no GSM/3g. Service menu still blank.

I then engaged in a series of the following (some steps repeated several times but I have no recollection of a particular order):

worry

reinsert sim

reboot phone

factory reset phone

wipe dalvik

wipe cache

factory wipe with CWM recovery (instead of Settings->Privacy)

tinker with CWM->Advanced->key & log and some others (sort interesting)

tinker with kies (note that KK1 rom is pretty different in what it has for USB stuffs -- if I ever get out of this mess, I may want to see if I can get to USB menu that I am more comfortable with)

tinker with ODIN and consider flashing with ODIN - but can't find tar artifacts for odin. NOTE: I never did any ODIN operations. But ODIN did see my phone while connected.

Consider seeing if there is a way to convert a CWM style zip in to tars flashable by ODIN. Learned some stuff about odin and its TARs. Making tars from cwm style zips looks really really unlikely (assuming you don't want to push the CWM zip to a phone first).

Postpone lots of things that I should be doing: work, family, sleeping, etc.

Flirted with trying a different rom, but didn't find one I liked.

Used ES File Explorer to explore the guts of the root file system. Learned a few things. I am a full time linux desktop user and was familiar with a lot of things that I saw.

Starting to have lots of remorse and thinking I just should have waited.

Monday night about 11pm EST; pretty beaten down and been engaged modding/hacking for 36hrs, on and off, with 0 results: I draft and send an email to negri, omitting the specifics, but humbly asking for a return. Go to bed, sad.

awoke early on tues 11/15 (5:15 am) this this on my mind.

ChodTheWacko suggested that he just put the KK1 rom zip on his sdcard and let CWM go and he was good. I thought: "I have done that, but what the hey. Lets do it again. I still have the ZIP on my sdcard, I will just lay here in bed and do it..."

It worked!

TL;DR f*cked my GNOTE's modem software somehow, and it took several CWM rom/kernel re-flashes be for I un-f*cked it.

I still don't have my text message and mms migrated over to my gnote (the mms part is the hard part/sms stuff is easy). I may have another thread about that since my use of TB to backup my sms/mms from SGT to migrate to GNOTE ended in a corrupted smd/mms DB and had to do another factory reset.