New Mac Mini 2011 - Bluetooth and WiFi not listed anymore

Got a new mac mini, tried to swap out the crap 5400rpm HD with a new SSD, and two wires came out of the right-hand molex plug that connects to the logic board. Ugh.

I pulled the unit apart, and found that particular lead tethers to the frame piece, I deduced I needed a new part since it almost looked hard wired.

I brought everything to the Apple store. The Genius ended up telling me that connected is ONLY for getting IR signals from the after-market remote, if I owned one.

I will never buy a remote, this unit is for iOS dvmt, so I gladly just agreed to pay them to assemble the unit and disregard that damn connector - he said it was fine of course.

So I just brought the repaired unit home, fired it up, and it has Lion. Cool.

I go into "Network", and now the column list on the left side is real short - it only has Ethernet and Firewire. Bluetooth [and anything related to it] AND the Wi-Fi adapter are MISSING COMPLETELY.

So, was the guy right when he said that molex connector for the logic board was ONLY for IR? Is it truly ok to not have it connected (ignore it now). If so, what happened so my WiFi is and Bluetooth is gone?

I opened the unit, confirmed the antenna is plugged in, and everything else is assembled ok, it appears to be ok.

I just spent like 3 hours doing everything I could dig up, from resetting PRAM, deleting Bluetooth Plist files.....I did a dozen things, but no bueno.

Its looking like i want to throw this brick back at them, but how else can I confirm why those two things are being missed?

Thanks much

Ya it was fine, I tested the wifi, connected my apple bluetooth keyboard, saw the addtil bluetooth elements in taht network list...

..its starting to get obvious, that the apple tech who assembled my mini didnt make (or lost) the necessary connections when putting it together.

This will likely require me to give it back and tell them to confirm. For the record, I have built and o/c's about 20 PC's in my life. I aint ever touching a MIni again, these things are extremely fragile, especially the molex connectors with small crimps.

Interestingly, I thought to myself when picking it up, "hmmm, its in a box, and she just wants me to pay and leave. I kinda want to hook it up at a temp station and run thru it real quick, 2 minutes max". But I just paid and left.

This just happened to me at the Porsche dealer too. They had to do a warranty DME/ECU flash on my 911. I picked it up and blazed away. RIght before getting home, I noticed the result of the flash was that I was missing features I used to have. I ended up bringing it back to have them fix 9 things they missed! The rep apologized, but it was a waste of my time.

THis is looking the same way...

o well.