FileVault Encryption stuck on black screen with cursor

Question

I tried to turn on FileVault on Yosemite on my late 2013 15" rMBP today and it has been stuck on a black screen with cursor for a while. Is this normal as part of the encryption process?

Answer 1

I recently had the problem of the black screen with cursor. There are many possible reasons for that and most of them of them are alarming and hint at hardware failures. Following this post, I found out that this is simply due to a corrupted configuration file that messes with the login window. So, instead of reinstalling the whole system, boot in single-user mode (hitting command-S at the chime) and then mount the filesystem (using the instructions at the boot- I haven't tested with an encrypted system) and then type

rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist

and then

exit

to reboot.

This solved it for me.

Answer 2

I wasn't sure what was happening so I did a hard reboot. Unfortunately this caused my hard disk to end up unbootable, with the boot process terminating at a stop sign. I followed n1000's answer in this thread and was only able to get to step 6. I decided to run disk repair + verify and rebooted after that. Somehow my computer booted and FileVault is now encrypting the remainder of my files while I am free to use the computer. Phew!