Q: MacBook Air boots with black screen and cursor

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!

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