Fatal error during Updating from dapper to edgy

[JothD]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Reporting as instructed by the update manager.
ran 'gksudo "update-manager -c"'

Updating from dapper to edgy, about 50% through the "Fetching and installing the updates" stage, stop message appeared:

Could not install '/var/cache/apt/archives/courier-authdaemon_0.58-4ubuntu1_i386.deb'

The upgrade aborts now. Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and include the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bugreport.

subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1

Will attach logs...

[JothD (joth-ubuntu)]

After closing the previously reported error window, installation carried on for a further 40 or so minutes, and then finally failed with a similar error message:

Could not install the upgrades

The upgrade aborts now. Your system could be in an unusable state. A recovery was run (dpkg --configure -a).

Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and include the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bugreport.

installArchives() failed

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

if you open terminal and try running sudo dpkg --configure -a does it than finish without errors? If not can you please attach the output of that command. Thank You for reporting this bug.

[JothD (joth-ubuntu)]

unfortunately the machine no longer boots; it gets stuck on the ubuntu splash screen when selecting normal of recovery boot options.
I've made a clean install of Edgy on another partition, but haven't looked much further into getting the old install back.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Your bug lacks information we would need to investigate further. We
are now going to close the bug - please reopen if you have more
information at hand.