Screen goes black with only mouse pointer visible on MacBook Pro laptop
I've been experiencing an intermittent issue on my
MacBook
Pro laptop, which is running
OS X El Capitan, where I find a black screen with only the mouse pointer
visible after I return to it from being away from it for some time. I can move the pointer by moving my finger about on the touchpad, but I get no visible
response to hitting any keys. I've tried hitting lots of different
key combinations to try to get the desktop to reappear or at least get
a login prompt, but none have worked. If I had music playing through
the headphones from iTunes , I can hear it still playing if I put the
headphones back on, but when I hit any key or keys I simply hear a "bonk"
sound and see no response from the system. Initially, when I encountered
the problem the only way I could gain access to the system again was to
reboot, which might lead to a loss of unsaved work. I have found, though,
that if I simply close the lid of the laptop as I might if I wanted to put
it to sleep, wait about a minute, then reopen the lid and hit a key that most
of the times I've tried that, instead of rebooting, when the problem has
occurred, that I could get a login prompt allowing me to log back into the
system with everything apparently running as it was before I encountered
the problem.
