new to ubuntu, primarily was a windows user however after the instability of it i have now become HIGHLY irritated, so now i swaped to using this WONDERFULY stable, fast, SANE and generaly beautiful o/s. now heres the machine specs im running:

IBM thinkpad T23
pentium 3 processor
512mb ram + 256mb ram
60gb harddrive
ubuntu 8.10
(these are the specs i can remember as dont now how to get this information through ubuntu)

and the issues are:
update manager can find updates, you can select them, you can tell them to install them and then WHAM! im hit with the following error messages

E: dpkg was interupted, you must run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct this problem.
E: _cache->open()fail, please report.

this message also appears on the following areas as discovered, probably others but anyways here they are:

synaptic package manager
update manager (same program maybe?)
also when it asks to install codecs to play media like music or movies.

when i run the terminal and enter 'sudo --dpkg --configure -a' it comes up with a list of comands.

so okay i can understand it right up until those commands appear, im clueless! no idea!

so if anyone can advise me on how to go about fixing all these silly lil errors please message me over it. cant play music files, cd's or anything else until this are fixed. oh and also if you happen to have time help on downloading and installing applications would be nice or if someone has a link to a simple thread on how to do that it'd be nice.

well last of all, i'd like to thank everyone for reading this and also thank them in advance for any help given.

if any more information is required, please ask for it but remember, total newbie and just figuring things out.