Help! Black screen with mouse arrow only

I just woke up my 15" mbp by opening the screen and I guess I took to long to enter my login password and now all I have is a black screen with the mouse pointer. I pressed the power button for a couple secs and nothing happens. Any suggestions, I wonder why this happened?

walnuts said:

I've had this and similar problems with my Macbook on leopard. I think its a bug. Do you use an external monitor/tv ever? I find that that exacerbates the problem. The only fix I know of is to restart.

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By restart do you mean holding the power button for a while until it shuts down, then start again? Is there any other way to do it thru the keyboard like with Windows alt ctrl del? Keep in mind this is with a solid black screen with only the mouse pointer active.

BTW I restarted with the power button, and seems fine now, but I would like to know how to do a "soft reset" in case it happens again.