MacBook Air boots with black screen and cursor

I had the same issue with my 2008 iMac and Apple support walked me through the fix yesterday...

1. Shut the computer down by holding the power button for 10 seconds

2. Restart the computer and press shift at the same time until you see the progress bar start moving

3. Once you reach the point where your screen goes dark and you see the cursor, type the first letter of the username for your computer, then hit Enter, then type your password, then hit Enter.

4. After a moment, you should see the spinning beach ball

5. Your screen should then move on to something along the lines of "Completing OSX Installation" (I can't remember the exact wording). Let it finish. After that it should go to your normal desktop and the issue should be fixed. (If your screen goes pitch black during this process, hit the space bar. I thought it wasn't working, but the screen was just sleeping).

Apparently it's an issue with an automatic update that never quite got past the login screen.

Hope this helps!

I've had this too - too me a week to get a fix. Here's what i did:

Press command R as it starts up and keep holding until disk ultility starts

Goto disk utility and erase macintosh HD

go back to the menu and selectinstall Mavericks OSX

and that fixed it for me. I had all my data backed up with time machine so once it restarted i got everything reloaded. If you havent got your files backed up then you might lose them...

Just installing Mavericks without erasing didnt work for me and i tried it a couple of times

good luck!

Excellent. Good feedback.

Best.

Worked for me too, thanks very much!

Worked for me too, can't thank you enough!

On behalf of my wife, thank you very much Jesseinma. Your note worked perfectly and made our weekend after not having the computer for 2 days.

Regards

Marc

Excellent jesseinma... This was a life saver 🙂

Fantastic! I had tried everything I could find in different forums with no luck. Nothing worked until I found this. Thanks!!!

Thank you. You ended my daughter's panic. Works just like you said.

Thank you! Thank you!

Thank you.

that was very helpful, thank you

The jesseinma works for me. I am writing this from my mac. BUT

Do you know if the mac work fine after reboot having applied the jesseinma's process?

Everything worked great for me after following the steps above.

initially there were no speakers detected, another reboot sorted that though

This worked for me too! Thank god! 🙂 Nothing lost!

1. Shut the computer down by holding the power button for 10 seconds

2. Restart the computer and press shift at the same time until you see the progress bar start moving

3. Once you reach the point where your screen goes dark and you see the cursor, type the first letter of the username for your computer, then hit Enter, then type your password, then hit Enter.

4. After a moment, you should see the spinning beach ball

5. Your screen should then move on to something along the lines of "Completing OSX Installation" (I can't remember the exact wording). Let it finish. After that it should go to your normal desktop and the issue should be fixed. (If your screen goes pitch black during this process, hit the space bar. I thought it wasn't working, but the screen was just sleeping).