Macbook Pro Boots to Black Screen with cursor

I got a 2023 Macbook Pro last year and I recently updated it to Sonoma 14.7. Now every time I try to boot my Macbook, it boots to a black screen with my cursor. The only way I can work around this is if I force reboot it, load the startup options and then select restart. I already tried to repair my startup disk in disk utility in the startup options menu and there doesn’t seem to be any issues.


Anyone have any ideas on how I could fix this?



MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 14.7

Posted on Sep 25, 2024 4:17 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 25, 2024 8:40 PM

When you ran First Aid, did you run it on the hidden Container? And did you click the "Show Details" button to scroll through the report to see if any unfixed errors were listed? The First Aid summary is known to lie (personal experience). In order to see the hidden Container, you need to click "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" before the hidden Container appears on the left pane of Disk Utility.


You can try clearing the NVRAM by using the following command in the Terminal app (located on the Utilities menu on the menu bar):

nvram  -c


This command is safe to use on an M-series Mac (be careful of any other variations since most references are referring to an Intel Mac, but those Intel Mac options rarely work on the M-series Macs). You need to reboot the Mac after clearing the NVRAM so that the system can provide the default settings to the hardware & OS. You may see a "permission denied" for some items such as computer name & related items & perhaps some other things (depends on system configuration). I've had to use this in order to boot some Macs M-series laptops when the Display settings got into a weird state after a macOS update (was a macOS bug...actually two bugs).


Make sure to disconnect all external devices in case one of them is causing a problem.


If you are using any anti-virus apps, cleaning/optimizer apps, or third party security software, then uninstall them by following the developers' instructions since these types of apps usually cause more problems than they solve because they interfere with the normal operation of macOS at a very low level.


Also, make sure all your third party apps are also completely up to date.

Similar questions

1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Sep 25, 2024 8:40 PM in response to AdamPres

When you ran First Aid, did you run it on the hidden Container? And did you click the "Show Details" button to scroll through the report to see if any unfixed errors were listed? The First Aid summary is known to lie (personal experience). In order to see the hidden Container, you need to click "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" before the hidden Container appears on the left pane of Disk Utility.


You can try clearing the NVRAM by using the following command in the Terminal app (located on the Utilities menu on the menu bar):

nvram  -c


This command is safe to use on an M-series Mac (be careful of any other variations since most references are referring to an Intel Mac, but those Intel Mac options rarely work on the M-series Macs). You need to reboot the Mac after clearing the NVRAM so that the system can provide the default settings to the hardware & OS. You may see a "permission denied" for some items such as computer name & related items & perhaps some other things (depends on system configuration). I've had to use this in order to boot some Macs M-series laptops when the Display settings got into a weird state after a macOS update (was a macOS bug...actually two bugs).


Make sure to disconnect all external devices in case one of them is causing a problem.


If you are using any anti-virus apps, cleaning/optimizer apps, or third party security software, then uninstall them by following the developers' instructions since these types of apps usually cause more problems than they solve because they interfere with the normal operation of macOS at a very low level.


Also, make sure all your third party apps are also completely up to date.

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Macbook Pro Boots to Black Screen with cursor

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.