Newbie Adept package manager not working

[Kathy O.]

Hi!
I am new to Kubuntu and am having a couple of problems.
#1 the Adept package manager is not working right.  I have used it a couple of 
times and it worked fine.  Today I was going to un-install some software and 
I got the following message at start up.
You will not be able to change your system settings in any way (install, 
remove or upgrade software), because another process is using the packaging 
system database (probably some other Adept application or apt-get or 
aptitude). Please close the other application before using this one.
So I kdesu-ed and got the following message.
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 166
  Major opcode:  144
  Minor opcode:  3
  Resource id:  0x0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 166
  Major opcode:  144
  Minor opcode:  3
  Resource id:  0x0
Failed to open device
Adept will finally open, but when it does preview changes and quit are the 
only things I can click on.
Needless to say it makes it imposable to do much of any thing with it.
I have also noticed that the error message above comes up in other 
applications.  Please help!  Thanks!  Kathy