Black Screen But Can See My Cursor

Yay yay yay Jesse!!!! You saved my life! I had a huge job due today and could NOT get any of the Apple suggested fixes to work! It took me twice to figure out entering a keystroke and hitting "enter" (as like someone else here I couldn't remember what username we were using) but hit a letter I thought might work and "enter" and it came back. Beware the 10.9.3 upgrade is RIGHT. I kept putting off installing the upgrade, but did so last night with the black screen result this morning. Bad, bad job Apple!!!! How many people are having their day ruined with this nonsense? (i also have 2013 iMac with retina display)

Great and simple solution. Second time I've had this problem and seems to be related to Maverick since I didn't have it before. Anyway this solution fixed the problem both times. Thanks a lot.

Awesome solution. Thank you!

I'm having the same issue here with a client's iMac.

I've followed the instructions but never get the spinning beach ball and it sits at the black screen every time.

Very frustrating.

I can SSH into this computer via the command line.. is there any way to fix this via the command line?

Hi Hoss,

Yes there is. Sadly the username trick didnt work for me but I did manage to fix the problem by using SSH. By connecting to the affected machine and cleaning up a few files you should be back in business.

1. ssh 192.160.0.1 -l username

2. sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist

3. sudo rm /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist

4. sudo rm /private/var/db/.AppleUpgrade

5. reboot

Thats it! It's likely you'll have either one or the other of the plist files but not both - hopefully that shouldnt matter. Obviously in step one you would replce the IP address and username with yours.

We love you, jessinma! Perfect!

And Apple, really! Big rap on the knuckles for causing this awful situation. If I hadn't had a second computer, and thought to search using search terms, "osx 10.9.2 black screen no cursor", I probably wouldn't have found this.

Hiya I've tried the advice above, but to no avail. I still get the blank screen???

Thanks this totally worked!

Thank you jesseinma - worked for me, too. Saved me a 2+ hour round trip to the apple store and a whole lot of anxiety. I had file vault turned on sp I had to blindly enter my pw twice.. For those of you who might have the same settings

Oops spoke too soon. Was seconds away from finishing install screen, but just when black again after that

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!

Genious! it worked.

Brilliant, well done, great fix.

Yes! worked for me too, after two nights of failed recovery attempts. thank you jesseinma

Spiro.r's suggestion appears to have gotten us unstuck. Thanks. 🙂