MacBook Air boots with black screen and cursor

Worked for me too! THANK YOU!!!!

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.

I don't know what i'm doing wrong, but instead of showing "Completing OSX Installation" it's going directly to the login and at the top bar said "safe boot" and i still have the problem, could you please help me. I'm new in Mac and i had great expectation of Mac OS but all i have is slowly mac even slower than my windows in bootcamp. Which means is Yosemite the problem not my hardware.

Excellent - thanks!

Your a star... saved everything and solved problem... Thanks loads. Michael

This fix just worked for us on our MacBook Air. The update pushed out today seemed to be the issue. Thanks!

Thank you very much for saving my day. Awesome booting technique

Dear all, I cannot get past a full black screen. It never gets anything on it but the fan starts and the machine was working until we tried to do a factory restart

Are you on a laptop or a desktop? This sounds like a different problem, but have you tried booting in safe mode? (Hold down shift when pressing power button)

I read a few posts and most referred to Pram resets and SMC resets. This post worked though for me. It didn't work the first time and I "typed my whole username" instead of the first letter and it worked. It went straight to desktop and no "beachball" but it is working and for that, thanks.

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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!"

This was on MacBook (13-inch, Late 2009). I updated today to 10.12.2 and it took several hours. Than a screen for linking a bluetooth keyboard came up with no inputs working. I had to initiate a hard shutdown and the above problem showed up. So something with the update than automatic restart failed today. Now the battery indicator shows as an "X" but it is still working under battery power and nothing happens when I attach the magsafe adaptor. The fan stays on continuously.

Worked! Thank you for sharing and posting!

Thanks for the help...This just worked on my new MacBook air so the information still is helpful.

Great. Big help! This worked for me!

this solution worked for me. thanks