I use a Dell Pentium 4, and Mint 5. I have recently downloaded to burn and trial two OSs.

The start up went well, but started a disc check. I escaped this several times, and then it would not continue past a point of writing on the screen.

It says file check must be done manually, or press Control-D, it does not start and comes back to this screen. My password entry is ignored.

Also I saw a screen wit a report of an X-ORG, or X Server graphics error.

Can my Mint 5 CD fix this, or can I access old files from a fresh installation on another partition?

Memtest seems clear. Maybe a virus or hack.

Please advise.

A file system check error would mean it's file system corruption of data on the disk. You need to manually run the file system check from a secured environment such as run level 1, unmounting the partitions and running a fsck(file system check on it).

If you can post the exact and complete error as well as the output of the following it would be easier to assist,