the +1 on here are made by the "Thanks!" button located in the signatures.
and loading custom ROMs does have a chance of losing your IMEI. for example, i didn't lose my IMEI when i rooted, but there was 2 times were i flashed a custom a ROM and lost my IMEI. in those instances, i was really lucky and restored a nandroid backup and the IMEI was back. (because sometimes, that hasn't worked for others and they still had no IMEI after a restore)
as for ROMs, it depends on your taste. if you want TouchWiz-baded or AOSP-based. currently i'm a TouchWiz one called Synergy. i've just found TouchWiz ROMs to work better on our phones (performance and battery), especially since that's what they were built for.
try to reboot your phone. that sometimes helps me with signal issues in general.