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i have a hp a6720y desktop with vista, the normal hp start up screen comes up that say f10 setup , esc=boot menu ect but none of those work then it goes to the black screen that says (Mediashield rom bios 10.0.0.35 RPT IDP copywrite (c) 2008 NVIDIA Corp. Detecting storage devices...) with a flashing line that looks like this _ . well i just restarted it and it had a black screen that said Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot drive and press a key. but when i press a key it just says the same over and over. I just restarted it again and it is back to the detecting storage screen again. Im about to throw it out the window! its only about a year and a half old. None of the keys seem to work to get me in any of the options. Im stuck and dont know what to do any help would be great. Ive opened it up and cleaned out the case and checked all conections. if i unplug the hard drive it does the same thing.

That is the sort of behavior that you would expect if your PC can't find your hard-drive or if some of the critical information on the hard-drive has become corrupt.

You may be able to boot off of a DVD and try to recover files or repair your Windows installation.

Yes. But before that, make sure that your bios didn't reset itself and unselect your HDD as a boot device.

Plug your hard drive back in, turn on the PC, and when it says "Press f10 for setup", press F10. Go to the bios tab that lists your boot devices (use left and right arrow keys to scroll tabs to the one that contains boot device selection). Make sure your hard drive is listed (usually, your DVD drive would be the first device and the hard drive, the second).

The other thing you can check while you are in the bios is whether your chipset is set up correctly for your hard drive. For example, if your drive is SATA (which it most likely is), make sure the chipset setting is selected that supports SATA (rather than IDE or PATA only).

After this, proceed to attempt boot Windows with a boot/recovery disk. If you make it in to windows and everything is fine, then as said, your installation of Windows is corrupted (which may be reversible if you can restore or repair your installation). At worst, you are probably only out the Hard Drive (and files on it), which is not that expensive to replace.

it wont let me select any of the f9 f10 f11 ect.. i push them but nothing happens like they dont work.

Try a PS2 keyboard, I suspect you have a USB one and the BIOS hasn't got legacy support for USB keyboards enabled.

Take any Cds out of the optical drive. Unplug any and all USB devices including phones. Power up your PC with just the monitor connected.

Report back what happens.

no its not a usb keyboard. i just unpluged everything but monitor and all that came up was a black screen that said Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot drive and press a key. but when i press a key it just says the same over and over.

So it does register keyboard input then?

If you can go into your bios setup (f10) and check the hdd is actually detected. Ensure for now at least it is set to first boot device. I've seen a few HP machines where you can change which hdd to boot from and you can also select a usb device here too. So the easiest thing is probably to load defaults and save.

Restart to check if it works now or not.

If that didn't work find your Vista disk, try booting from that and using the recovery options on there.

well thats what i thought but i restarted it again with only the monitor plugged in and it went back to the detecting storage devices again and the key board still doesnt work and i dont have a disk so im sure im screwed

Does the drive even spin up? Can you boot of a bootable cd?

hi rrembold ,

Please help me with this ,
I have a same thing you had with these message:
media shield ROM Bios 10.0.0.0.35
I saw you post your problem here last year,
Finally How do you solve it , many thanks for help
my computer is HP M9517C