At 17 weeks he's still very young so he's still going to have accidents. I've crate trained all of my dogs. Bella was 12 weeks old when we got her and I started crate training immediately and she picked up on what she was supposed to do within days (of course she wasn't completely potty trained to where I could completely trust her until about 5 months). If you are home with him during the day crate training will be a piece of cake. If you work during the day it's going to probably take a little longer. It takes a lot of consistency and praise but it works. Basically with crate training you take him out to go potty, you should always lead him to the door and outside rather than carry him so that he knows where he's supposed to go. Tell him to "go potty" or whatever phrase you choose and if he goes he gets lots of praise and gets to come inside and play for a while. If he doesn't "go" then he goes right back in his crate for another 15 minutes or so and repeat the process until he "goes" outside. While he's so young you only let him outside his crate for about 1/2 hour or so to play and then put him back in the crate for another hour or so. Time it so that you're taking him out about every 2 hours. With repetition and consistency he'll catch on really fast. Make sure you give him lots of praise when he "goes" outside so he knows that he's done good and if he doesn't go just pick him up give him love and simply put him back in his crate, he hasn't done anything wrong so you don't want him to think he's being punished. It will be hard to put him back in the crate after only a 1/2hour or so of having him out but believe me, it really works. Make sure you watch him like a hawk when he's outside his crate so that if he does have an accident in the house you can catch him and correct him. If you look in the training forum on this site you'll find all sorts of info. on crate training. If he does have an accident inside the house tell him "no" pick him up and take him outside, if he finishes outside then lots of praise and he gets to stay out for a while but if he doesn't finish outside he has to go back in his crate. As he gets older you can start to lengthen the amount of time outside of the crate. I'm sorry this is so long
Good luck!