Problem with booting into Linux

[Geetha Shamanna <s_geetha vsnl com>]

Hello all:

I am very new to Linux and have been using it on and off for about a couple
of weeks now.
When I boot into Linux, I normally hear a prompt which indicates that my
synthesizer (doubletalk) has been found. I then key in my user information,
and start Emacspeak. At this point DoubleTalk starts speaking. I have had
no problem with this setup so far.

However, when I booted into Linux this morning, I did not here the
"DoubleTalk found" prompt. Instead, the following error message appeared on
the screen:
"An error has occurred during the file system check, dropping you to a
shell. The system will reboot. When you leave the shell, give root password
for maintenance, or type ctrl-d for normal startup."   
It does not however accept my root password. If I hit ctrl-d as suggested,
the system reboots. However, the same message appears again. I am unable to
figure out why this happened, or what needs to be done to set it right.
Any help would be highly appreciated.

Thanks,
Geetha