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!

Here's what Applecare had me do:

-Turn the computer off

-Restart holding Command-S

-text scrolls on the screen, and then ends with a cursor

-enter:

mount -uw /

cd /Library/Preferences

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

-restart

The problem is a bad update that messes with the login window. Deleting the file above has the computer reset it. When it restarts, you'll be asked to re-accept your operating language and re-enter your Apple ID, but unlike the method that has you erase your hard drive, all your data is preserved.

that was very helpful, thank you

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!

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).

This solution didn't work for me. So I looked further and ran into a video on Youtube (type "mba screen goes black youtube" into Google and it will show up on the top of the search results page) and it shows a very simple, but ridiculous solution -- pick your computer up off your lap or the table and the screen will appear again. We tried it and it worked. We had a great laugh, but goodness, Apple, there is a deeper problem here. With a computer purchased brand new six days ago, something like this should never happen. My fear is that the problem will return shortly after the Return Policy or Warranty run out. Then what do we do? So to avoid that, we'll return the computer tomorrow and be done with it.

I followed these instructions methodically three times with only steps 1-4 being successful. Spinning ball appears for a brief moment but returns to a cursor. I let it sit in this state in hopes it was actually making progress, as you noted may be the case in step five. I suppose at this point I bring it in to apple

MacBook Air 13" Mid 2011

fixed my blackscreen w/cursor issue by performing a PRAM reset.

immediately after pressing the power button release and hold command+R+P until your computer boots to initial screen with the apple logo. after it finished booting it will take you to options for re-installing OSX.

The real fix for this is following:

#1 Boot to recorvery disk
#2 Run terminal
#3 Navigate to: cd /volumes/Macintosh HD/var/db
#4 Remove the file .AppleSetupDone: rm .AppleSetupDone
#5 Create a new file: touch .AppleSetupDone
#6 type reboot, wait for it to start up and there you go, back to login screen 🙂

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!!!

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!!!

Simple worked for me.

I tried and tried to try all of the solutions on this page but sadly none of them worked.

When I started out with cmd-S and tried to input the various commands the message was 'file could not be found.etc.

Whoa!

About to pull out my remaining hair out and give up, I thought I would simply try the command

reboot (This was after starting up with cmd-S, waiting for all the data to load and then just inputting reboot.)

Miracle of miracles it worked!!

I hope it might work for you. If it doesn't it's a very short and quick operation. Good luck.

Thanks to everyone who went before this to get me to this stage.

Jesseinmas solution worked for me just now on a 15" mbp 2011. The only difference is my computer didnt immediately go to my home screen after the beach ball. I thought it failed and hit my power button once real quick and then it did. Thanks a lot!

This did not work for me, and in a big way. After following this procedure I couldn't get into my MBP late 2011 2.4Ghz at all. Rebooting left at a slash/circle and I've just had to re-install Yosemite. SO BE CAREFUL OUT THERE Y'ALL. This may trash your installation.

I did a Yosemite update and got the black screen and no cursor. Talked to a tech rep... told me to do a P RAM reset by holding down the COMMAND, OPTION, "P", and "R" Keys at the same time while turing the compter on.. Finally worked. Nothing else would work.