Black Screen Workaround
(Updated - 4/23/12)
Thank to everyone's submissions we've been able to track this issue down for the vast majority of users.
We've determined that this bug appears to be caused by older Nvidia drivers. If those having this issue can try updating their drivers directly from the Nvidia website for their chipset, that would be great. You must be using driver version 296.10 or higher.
The URL is: http://www.geforce.com/Drivers
Once your drivers are updated if you still hit the black screen crash on startup, please try setting your Nvidia driver as the preferred 3D device as shown here: http://screencast.com/t/RTo1NZaVM
If you could let us know if this works for you, that would be great.
Thank you in advance.