package manager freeze after downloading files

Please check if sources.list is correct and in case create a clean one.
http://repogen.simplylinux.ch/

No error messages while updating via CLI?
Maybe the option to only download and not to install is enabled?
http://www.debianadmin.com/images/syn/6.png

Logfile:
/var/log/apt/term.log

The sources.list file appears correct, and an "apt-get update" works properly.

There are no error messages when updating using apt-get. After all files are downloaded, no further output occurs.

The download only option is not used. update-manager attempts to begin the install, indicating that it is preparing packages. The progress meters continues to bounce back and forth. But dpkg is never run, and no progress is ever made.

The term.log file does not seem to be altered. The file is 0 bytes in length.

Assume you've taken a look at other log files already, syslog, dpkg.log
Honestly running out of ideas, never heard about such an issue. Not sure if it's worth the trouble to un/reinstall update-manager, update-manager-core; btw. what happens when you run update-manager through Alt+F2?

Yes, I've looked at the other log files. It appears that dpkg never gets called, so I'm not surprised to find no errors in dpkg.log.

It will take a day or so to get more information. The user has it right now (it functions just fine, except for the package manager). I'll try the uninstall/re-install of update-manager and update-manager-core. If that fails, I just may have to backup the /home directory, and re-install from scratch.

can you give the output of:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

i had similar problem and found dkms was not installed...try installing dkms
by typing sudo apt-get install dkms or with synaptic package manager install dkms
regards
rajinder