Adept hangup

[Gerald I. Evenden]

Adept noted about 44 updates to my system so I proceeded to start the process.  
Since this is a somewhat length process I left the computer to its devices 
and returned about 40 minutes later with the screen showing about 3% 
completion on installing one of the updates.  The downloads had been 
completed.

But, after several moments, the Adept still showed 3% completion and it became 
obvious that Adept was in hyperspace.  I tried everything I could think of to 
get Adept to cleanly quit but to no avail.

Even after rebooting I now get the message:

"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."

whenever I try to execute Adept.  A "ps -A" gives me no clue as to what might 
be running and suspect that some file or directory has been locked.

HELP!  How do I get this cleaned up.

Many thanks.

-- 
The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due
to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.
-- Havelock Ellis (1859-1939)  British psychologist