Earlier today I tried to get on the computer, but I couldn't. There was a black screen and that's it. The computer itself was on. I moved the mouse around and that didn't help. I had to shut the computer down. When I brought it back up it would not load properly. I shut it down a second time and brought it up and it would not load properly again. I shut it down a third time and waited a little while. I came back to the computer and turned it on. Luckily it loaded properly.

Anyone know why the computer would do that?
Thanks.

more than likely it had a problem when it went into suspend or hibernation mode (sometimes a device driver or some software will refuse to shut down, and that won't let it finish what it is doing)

by default it will try to resume from hibernation twice then it will try to boot normally into the last known good configuration

you are probably fine, but if it happens again you will have to find that flaky driver and update or reinstall it.

Thanks for the information robyrob.