I went back to the previous Sierra version from my Time Machine. It took me hours (who's gonna pay me for my time?) but at least my MPB is running ok for now. Anyway, I think Apple should fix this stupid problem as soon as possible and send a new update. Why customers would have to guess they should write their passwords on a black screen? Apple, you gotta be kidding!
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Black screen after update to 10.12.2 iMac
- Thread starter skadd
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Hi everyone,
I used the following solution to successfully get my iMac working yesterday. Hope this helps you too
What is important here, is that when you enter these commands hit return (enter) quickly after typing each command in - otherwise they tend to automatically start running, sometimes halfway through writing them, and the whole process doesn't work. Took me about three attempts to figure out that this was what I was doing wrong initially. So here's what you need to do:
----
First, you need to shut down your Mac, if it's powered on. Pressing the power key for a couple of seconds will do the trick.
Next, you have to boot your Mac in single-user mode. That's done by pressing the Command and S keys at the same time, right after pressing the power key. If you did it right, you should see a whole bunch of lines on the screen in what is a Terminal-like interface.
(I've seen someone recommend that you reset the PRAM three times before booting in the single-user mode. There is no harm in doing that. Hit the Command, Option, P and R keys at the same time, right after you power it on, and wait until you hear the startup chime for the third time before letting go. Then, quickly press the Command and S keys, to get you into the single-user mode.)
You then need to type the following commands:
http://betanews.com/2016/12/15/blank-screen-cursor-macos-update-fix/
I used the following solution to successfully get my iMac working yesterday. Hope this helps you too
What is important here, is that when you enter these commands hit return (enter) quickly after typing each command in - otherwise they tend to automatically start running, sometimes halfway through writing them, and the whole process doesn't work. Took me about three attempts to figure out that this was what I was doing wrong initially. So here's what you need to do:
----
First, you need to shut down your Mac, if it's powered on. Pressing the power key for a couple of seconds will do the trick.
Next, you have to boot your Mac in single-user mode. That's done by pressing the Command and S keys at the same time, right after pressing the power key. If you did it right, you should see a whole bunch of lines on the screen in what is a Terminal-like interface.
(I've seen someone recommend that you reset the PRAM three times before booting in the single-user mode. There is no harm in doing that. Hit the Command, Option, P and R keys at the same time, right after you power it on, and wait until you hear the startup chime for the third time before letting go. Then, quickly press the Command and S keys, to get you into the single-user mode.)
You then need to type the following commands:
- /sbin/fsck -fy
- /sbin/mount -uw /
- rm -f /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist
- rm -f /var/db/.AppleUpgrade
- reboot
http://betanews.com/2016/12/15/blank-screen-cursor-macos-update-fix/
Just finished almost an hour of helping my son in law recover from the same problem on his 2012 mini. Finally just had him restore the time machine backup, which was up to date anyway. So he is back on 10.12.1 and has turned off auto updates. What a pain, I just gave them this machine for Christmas and was worried I had done something wrong when I set it up.
The good thing was that he only had to restore 35GB since it was a new machine, so it was quick. And now he knows how to recover from a disaster himself too.
The good thing was that he only had to restore 35GB since it was a new machine, so it was quick. And now he knows how to recover from a disaster himself too.
Last edited:
Holy cow...
I have a remotely located mac mini 2011 headless server i manage voa ssh and teamviewer.
Its been on 10.12.2 since dec17.
It will do this on bootup sometimes, and have to call father to go into basement and have try it again. Usually comes up on second boot attempt.
Didnt realize that update is what hosed the reliability.
I have a remotely located mac mini 2011 headless server i manage voa ssh and teamviewer.
Its been on 10.12.2 since dec17.
It will do this on bootup sometimes, and have to call father to go into basement and have try it again. Usually comes up on second boot attempt.
Didnt realize that update is what hosed the reliability.
Are your machines set to automatically login? That sounded like it might be a common thread here, and my son in law's machine was setup like that. It was also set to auto-update. When he woke up this morning, it had booted into recovery mode overnight.
It worked!!!! Thank you so much, so weird. I think what caused it was safari froze for whatever reason and I shutdown the computer, having to log out my wife with her username and password then when logging back in got the black screen. I think she had App Store updates pending. However my user account was updated to 10.12.2. I have a retina MacBook Pro 2013. So yeah, just entering my admin password cleared the black. It was out of commission all day. Clearing the smc and resetting the vram or whatever didn't work. Thank you sooo much!!!!!
-Anthony
I had similar issues on two laptops. My Late 2011 MacBook Pro went into a firmware update loop and turned off. On turning it back in it took ages to boot, but was then fine.
My work Retina 2013 model hung on a black screen. Eventually powered it off. NVRAM resets, Boot Select, Target Disk mode all didn't work, machine just sat at a black screen.
After resetting the SMC, then the NVRAM 3 times, the machine came back to life.
Apple's QA is just terrible at the moment.
My work Retina 2013 model hung on a black screen. Eventually powered it off. NVRAM resets, Boot Select, Target Disk mode all didn't work, machine just sat at a black screen.
After resetting the SMC, then the NVRAM 3 times, the machine came back to life.
Apple's QA is just terrible at the moment.
2013 iMac Update to Sierra with Black Screen Problem. I too had tried all the options of rebooting multiple times, restarting in safe mode, holding the shift key to prevent start up applications from running during login, and starting up in the recovery mode and using the disk utility to run diagnostics on my start up disk. All to no avail. I was reluctant to try to re-download the operating system or to back up from time capsule.
I tried the above mentioned trick and it worked perfectly: I turn my machine off, and restarted my iMac. Once the machine rebooted and the cursor was in the upper left corner with a black screen, I let the notifications appear on the screen and then one by one they disappeared as they had before. I let the machine sit for another 1 to 2 minutes to allow any other operations to complete.
At this point, with the cursor still in the upper left corner I typed in my login password, and hit enter and the screen reappeared as usual with all the background images, control bar, and folders appearing as normal.
I have not tried to reboot the machine or to reload any updates or operating system at this point for fear of any problems since I have some urgent work to complete. However, at this time everything seems to be working perfectly.
Good luck and thanks for the advice above.
I tried the above mentioned trick and it worked perfectly: I turn my machine off, and restarted my iMac. Once the machine rebooted and the cursor was in the upper left corner with a black screen, I let the notifications appear on the screen and then one by one they disappeared as they had before. I let the machine sit for another 1 to 2 minutes to allow any other operations to complete.
At this point, with the cursor still in the upper left corner I typed in my login password, and hit enter and the screen reappeared as usual with all the background images, control bar, and folders appearing as normal.
I have not tried to reboot the machine or to reload any updates or operating system at this point for fear of any problems since I have some urgent work to complete. However, at this time everything seems to be working perfectly.
Good luck and thanks for the advice above.
So i myself am still on El Capitan and i was planning on upgrading to Sierra this weekend but reading this thread makes me fearful of doing so, I waited this long to update to Sierra because i wanted apple to polish out some of the initial bugs but it sounds like there is a serious bug in the login process which is why you guys were getting the black screen on startup? is that in the latest release?
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Sorry for the "blank" post just now, hit the button by mistake. Just wanted to report that this thread helped me out with the same black screen problem. It showed up for me when I recently upgraded to OS v10.12.3. WTF, Apple? Oh well. Now that I know how to get past it it's not a problem. Thanks for showing me a solution for this odd behavior.
How exactly did you fix it the black screen after the installation? Can you pleas give a step by step list of what to do to get past the black screen?
Couldn't be easier... (for me, at least). When that happens, I just type my password again, and I can see everything again. The only tricky bit is that you can't see what you're typing on the screen (screen is black), but not usually a problem for me.
I call this a workaround, not a fix, but I don't care as long as it works.
M.
This is my experience. I was a getting a white screen and not a black screen when booting after the update. The curser wasn't present and I had waited for about an hour for my mac to boot up. I tried all of the suggestions above and they did not work for my specific case. I threw up a HELL Marry and unplugged all external drives and peripherals and booted my Mac Book pro 2012. This seemed to resolve the issue for me. I hope this helps anyone having the same issues I was facing.