Package manager problems

[Ron Gauci]

Hello,
Although I have many years experience in building and using computers, I
am a newbie to both Linux and Ubuntu. I have installed 8.04 on three
separate computers, two 32 bit on laptops and one 64 bit on a desktop.
They were all working perfectly, but during one of the updates on my
desktop something went wrong and now the update manager will not work!
It comes up with these errors:-
=========
E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to
correct the problem. 
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.
=========
When I ran the "'dpkg --configure -a'" both as user and root it comes
up with this:-
==========
ron at ubuntu-64:~$ sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo: unable to resolve host ubuntu-64
[sudo] password for ron: 
dpkg: parse error, in file `/var/lib/dpkg/updates/0005' near line 1:
 newline in field name `padding'
ron at ubuntu-64:~$ 

==================
Can you please tell me if I have to re install or is it something simple
to fix.
Regards
Ron gauci