New i7Mac and Current hardware/Lion issues

[BarkingGhost]

Last Friday I purchased the first Apple computer for my household. It is a 27" iMac with the 3.4 GHz i7. I unboxed it, went the the setup motions of creating an account, performing all system updates (including EFI), and began migrating the wife's email, iTunes, etc.

Initially, I was using the Ethernet connection, but knowing where this iMac was going to reside in the home my goal was for 802.x connectivity. The following issues appear to exist, some when Cold Booting that seem to disappear if I Reboot.

Upon Cold Booting the top menu bar (Finder bar?) doesn't automatically appear. I've left the iMac sit there for an hour and it never appears. I am not using the 'hide' feature, and it will appear if I hit the Finder icon on the Dock.

When I do force the menu bar to appear, the wireless indicator shows offline in appearance. If I right-click on it, the following is reported: Wi-Fi: No hardware installed. This happens on every Cold Boot, but not on any Reboot.

Also, if I boot/reboot with a USB storage device attached it is visible. If I Eject it, physically remove it and re-attach it, it is not detected unless I either Shutdown/Boot or Reboot. No auto-detection.

Third party software (Thunderbord, Firefox, etc.) seem to pseudo-install as Devices, and seemingly not permanently installed. Maybe this is just my new-to-Mac experience, but any non-Apple software I install disappears from the Dock on Shutdown/Boot or Reboot.

Wishing to follow Moderator advice, I am seeking to return this unit. Before doing so, I wished to remove personal data and information. I tried reinstalling Lion via the Internet from the Recovery HD partition on the internal HDD.

Unfortunately, I cannot remove the Mac OS X Lion partition. Deleting partition fails, and Erase doesn't seem to really Erasse. And any reinstallation shows the existing User information and personal data remainins as well as the BUGs remaining.

I attached an external hard drive, formatted Extended, installed a Recovery HD partition and booted into it to perform a Lion Reinstall on the internal hard drive, but again I cannot Erase or delete the Mac OS X Lion partition. And any re-installation attempts from the Recovery HD (either the HDD or external drive) leaves me with the User account information and personal data in place.

How does one return an iMac without personal information on it?

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As an after-thought, I could re-partition the Mac OS X Lion partition on the internal HDD to accommodate a Windows 7 installation. Could I then boot into Windows 7 and use that environment to remove the original Mac OS X Lion partition, or at least re-format?

If this is possible, I suppose I could then Reboot into the external hard drive's Recovery HD and perform a clean Lion re-installation. Thoughts?

 

[marc11]

Just delete anything personal, empty the trash and return it. I doubt anyone at Apple is going to go through that machine with a comb to try and recover any data. I would not worry ab out your name being on it, that will all get wiped. Just delete any apps you installed, create a new generic account with admin rights and delete your current account and its home folder, any email, clean out Safari of any cache, cookies, etc, delete any account data and return it.

I would not attempt to load Windows, or partition or otherwise reinstall the OS, waste of time IMHO.

 

[BarkingGhost]

I finally got a clean install by attaching an external hard drive an installing a Recovery HD to it. I rebooted to this external Recovery HD, deleted the original Mac OS X Lion partition, create a new Extended partition, and perform a clean install.

This approach provided the removal of personal information and data that I sought prior to the iMac return. This clean install still had system updates that I did not perform, but the EFI was still updated from the iMac's original setup. As a result, the observed issues still remain.

I have a Genius Bar appointment today for the return. I'll purchase another one as a separate transaction, but this time let them do the setup and prove the observed issues are not carrying over to the next unit.