Mid 2012 MBP WIFI/BT issue

[Brady92]

As the title says I'm having issues with my wifi/Bluetooth. I lost both after deleting the cd drive for a spare ssd and upgrading ram. I was told after I upgraded the ram that its not a good idea to upgrade one stick at a time (which I did) and that could be a possible reason. Is there anything I could try to fix it aside from the obvious of returning back to stock?

 

[Audit13]

Tried a fresh install of the os?

I know of two people running 13" Macbooks (2010, 2011) with 10 GB of ram (2 GB, 8 GB) with no Bluetooth or wi-fi issues.

 

[Brady92]

No I haven't I was under the assumption the os is reinstalled through the cloud so been avoiding that.

 

[Audit13]

I recommend doing a fresh install via USB. If you don't have a usb installer, try an internet restore to see if you can connect too a network, wired or wireless.

 

[treekram]

I don't know which mid-2012 MBP (13" or 15") you have, but in both cases, you do need to at least unscrew the AirPort/Bluetooth board in order to remove the optical drive. So that's where I would suspect first that things went wrong. That's presuming you did both the SSD and RAM replacement at the same time. The iFixit guide for the 13" recommends removing more stuff than the iFixit guide for the 15" or the OWC video guide. When I did my replacement, I followed the OWC video guide with regards to this step. If you removed some of those small connectors, make sure those are securely attached. It's also not difficult to break these if you apply too much pressure one way or the other. Even if you didn't remove these connectors, it may have also come loose when you did the replacement so check it to make sure they're secure. Also check to make sure the AirPort/Bluetooth ribbon cable is connected.

I assume also that you're using a proper bracket for the SSD (vs some ad-hoc remedy to hold the SSD in place). If not, maybe you should.

 

[Trey M]

No I haven't I was under the assumption the os is reinstalled through the cloud so been avoiding that.

Yeah, Google how to make a bootable macOS Sierra installer using an 8GB flash drive. There are several third party apps that will do the whole process for you, otherwise you can use some pretty simple terminal commands. If you don't already have a local copy of Sierra downloaded, you will have to download it again from the App Store and use that file to create the bootable USB installer.

This approach still requires you to download the OS from the cloud, however with this approach your computer will be down for significantly less time since you won't have to do the entire download plus the install at one time, you'll just have to do the install. It's also useful to have a USB installer backup just in case.

I would probably try treekram's advice first though and ensure that everything appears to be plugged in correctly before flashing your HD, though.