[SOLVED] Network manager messup

[ONEother]

Just yesterday, after pulling a new laptop (with Hardy Heron on it) out of the box, I managed to run down the battery to nil -- during an update *hand/forehead*
So after running dpkg on recovery mode, this is what I get

errors were encountered while processing:
dbus
dbus-xll
evolution
evolution-exchange
evolution-plugins
f-spot
hal
tracker
libdeskbar-tracker
network-manager
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
reading package lists... done
building dependency tree
reading state information... done
calculating upgrade... done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
15 not fully installed or removed
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue?

So first, what does this mean, and second (I'm guessing closely related) why does network manager return a "you are not allowed to access" when I try to run it?
Just a warning -- I'm a total newbie. Worked with Windows all my life and this is over my head.

[ONEother]

Oh and further down, after telling it to go ahead, this turns up

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of update-notifier:
update-notifier depends on hal; however:
Package hal is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing update-notifier (--configure_:
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
dbus
dbus-xll
evolution
evolution-exchange
evolution-plugin
f-spot
hal
tracker
libdeskbar-tracker
network-manager
network-manager-gnome
policykit-gnome
rythmbox
tracker-search-tool
update-notifier
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Finished, please press ENTER

EDIT: Just found out that hibernate and suspend both fail.

Help?
It's new, I don't mind reinstalling Ubuntu if you tell me how.

[waterhead]

This doesn't really seem like a wireless problem, so I moved the thread to the Ubuntu section.

I don't have an answer to your problem, but maybe someone in the Ubuntu section has run across this before.

[ONEother]

Fortunately, the first thing I did was to setup a rescue disk. I've now reinstalled Ubuntu (at factory settings) and no more problems.