Synaptic Package Manager broken!

[ckuecker]

Hello,

I just tried to start Synaptic Package manager to remove a package that is not working for me, so I could attempt reinstalling it.

When I choose "Synaptic Package Manager' from the System - Administration pulldown, I get a message on the bar at the bottom of the screen - "Starting Admin...", which goes away after a few seconds without Synaptic starting.

This isn't the first time I've seen this behavior - I have a link to Gnometris on the desktop, and it behaves similarly.

I tried restarting the machine - no change.

Any ideas?

Chuck Kuecker

[ckuecker]

Further info - 'sudo' has stopped working, and I can't get access to Firestarter. Also, I am losing incoming emails, thought I was able to regain this by restarting the computer twice yesterday.

I've decided that i need to do a clean reinstall of Ubuntu, so am backing my data up. Any ideas about what caused this would really be helpful - I don't want to do a new install only to have the problem recur because I backed up the cause!