Black Screen But Can See My Cursor

Jesseinma- THANK YOU!

My sister-in-law just had this happen, took her macbook to the Apple store and they wiped her computer to fix it. Fortunately, I did a quick search first and saw your awesome directions and it worked like a charm. Thank you again for posting this invaluable information!

spiro.r's solution worked for me. I tried all the other solutions on this thread and from other threads about typing the username and password "blindly" but not of that worked. I booted into single user mode and executed these commands and rebooted and it worked immediately.

For me, I think the problem originated because I didn't have enough free disk space to fully install the last 10.9.4 Mavericks combo update (I only had 1-2 GB). I booted into single user mode, moved about 30 GB of files to an external hard drive, executed the commands listed above, rebooted, and it worked!

Thank you Jessieinma! Had to hit enter and enter password a couple of times after getting back to black screen but eventually got it to work! Now I can cancel my appt at the Apple store tomorrow. Woo hoo!

Hey all- jesseinma's solution did not work for me, nor did the PRAM restart and certainly didn't want to erase my HD.

Apple knows this is an issue and has now dedicated a team to fixing the problem in their call center. Call them!

The Apple tech walked me through entering in some code (after holding down Command S) that took care of the problem and it took less than 10 min to do. I'm sorry I didn't save exactly what he told me to enter in.

Call them!!!

I followed the steps recommended to no avail, but found another way.

1. Create new user using single user mode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfSFA61M3go

2. Put mac into target disc mode

3. Start up another mac (that you can connect firewire or thunderbolt)

4. Hold Option during startup and select the other macs harddrive

5. Follow the step to set up the new user.

6. Shut down the computer and restart original computer.

Fixed!

After that I had to go in and delete the new user I set up, but that was easy peasy. Good luck! This was one annoying problem!

Didn't work for me ((( Tried holding SHIFT button it didn't go black , i entered username and password and it was ok. After screen gets black , i touched the track pad and again this cursor !!!!

what to do ????

For those of you having this problem lately. Run the following command by going into Single User mode by pressing Command + S while booting. Talked to Apple support and resolved it.

mount -uw /

cd /Library/Preferences

mv com.apple.loginwindow.plist com.apple.loginwindow.plist.old

reboot

and do this if it's still not resolved

▪ 1. Shut down your Mac if it is on.

▪ 2. Press the power button to start the computer.

▪ 3. Immediately press and hold the Command key and one of the following:

▪ the "s" key for single-user mode. (Command-S)

then shut your computer and turn it back on normally.

Spiro.r, your solution worked for me. I have gotten JessinMA's solution to work before, but yours works when the other doesn't. It also has the benefit of being able to run from my desk to a remote Mac. Thanks!

Perfect, thanks spiro.r - I was unable to use the earlier method because no input was possible at the black screen. Just needed a quick re-config of the login window prefs.

AFAIK -- /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist was deprecated in Mavericks (maybe earlier)... So for me I just removed the com.apple... entry but this wasn't present. It might show up for people who upgraded from earlier OS's but I can't be sure, we don't do that around here 🙂

For what it's worth, we use NIS authentication and therefore use the "username/password" option at the login screen, so you can't just press a letter to pick a user. I was unable to enter anything at the black screen because it would just give me a system beep/funk noise.

Next time (if it happens again), I'll try steps 2 and 4 separately, I'm curious whether both are needed. Again, many thanks!

Well... Nothing has worked. Not sure I'm following directions properly. When I restart holding command+s and I arrive at the screen to enter the info, do I hit return in between each line? The new line begins with root#, or something like this. Is ssh the same as single user mode? I'm lost here. Not sure what to do next.

Strange but this works for me too.

I have been having this problem for many months, even upgrade to Yosemite didn't help. I have been curing this but three finger swiping to anther window and back. Very frustrating.

Was about to go the Apple Store tomorrow but now I don't have to!

I am so grateful to you, Jesseinma! I had to try your fix a couple of times but it did come through for me, at last! What a relief! Thank you SO MUCH for taking the time to post that fix for us. Thank you!!!!

Another thank-you, jesseinma.

I was going to start pulling out the gray hairs this was causing, but decided to search the forums instead.

In my opinion, the forums beat the genius bar any day of the week.

- Andrew

This is the best Jesseinma! My boyfriend's 2010 Macbook Pro hasn't been working for a good 6 months. When we finally took it into the genius bar he told us the backlight was out and we would have to pay $300 to fix it! I didn't believe he was correct, considering we could still see the curser. Your answer was completely the solution! You should work at the genius bar!

Thanks for suggesting safe mode. It turns out my comp was auto upgrading while it was in sleep mode and I had the log in issue and it got messed up locked up and went black but everything was working. So I shut down, restarted pressed shift went into safe mode and I could finally see me screen and log in and low and behold it was because of the **** software update. Thank you so much to all who helped! The pain in my stomach has left and my pockets also thank you!