System displays "File system maintenance error, press ctrl+d" while booting

In my office I've Ubuntu 8.10 desktop installed and it's running for a long time. When ever the system is started, I'll get a file system maintenance error and something it's prompted for the root password or (press ctrl+d to continue). After pressing Ctrl+D the system normally boots up. I could not resolve this issue for a long time and I think something should be done in the fstab file. I'm not sure to do anything and expecting the experts here to help to perfectly fix this. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

This happens when the root (/) filesystem gets corrupt and needs to be fixed. At the point during the boot where it finds that the root filesystem is corrupt, the root filesystem is already mounted, and Ubuntu won't do a fsck on a filesystem that is mounted since that is unsafe.

The best way to recover from this is to boot the liveCD and run a filesystem check on it from there, when it is not mounted. You can use fsck from a terminal, or run gparted (in System -> Administration) where you can right-click the filesystem and choose "check".

Also, please note that Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop is no longer supported. You should upgrade to a supported version. See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EOLUpgrades for help on how to do that.