Thanks for your efforts. I will try to do what you suggested but i doubt if it can be done on the Mandriva GUI. A question aside, is it not pointless if you have a GUI put there to make it more user friendly and have to recourse to the shell all the time. or when things get difficult, although I know that option is not there with Windows?
Another question is on a different hardrive with Mandriva 8 on Virtualbox was working fine until I took the prompt to upgrade to 2 then it will only work in 'safe mode' and I cannot get rid of it even using rm in root mode. Granted I was daft to take the prompt (upgrade) but you do assume the package manager will be versatile enough to take into account more than just dependencies.
Fred.

Hi, it's quite possible that a library of another file can't be found.

a link checker and fixer...

ldconfig --help (-v -n /(library) /lib or /lib64

It could be only a version mismatch between the required packages.

if you run...

rpm -Va | grep miss

will print to screen a list of missing libraries from the rpm database.

Try to re-install any that appear in the list.

Cheers, Glenn

At the risk of becoming annoying maybe my simplest option is to unistall the lot and reinstall the latest version of vbox. This said, previous 'hardrives' still exist and come back into play (causing possible conflicts} even when you have resetup the controling program. The end question being can it be done to install the latest free version of vbox with out the usual codecs?

Fred.

Many thanks for replies thus far!

What I suggested can all be done using the GUI. In the Software Manager, set the filter to "Installed" and search in names for virtualbox. Uncheck those that I suggested should be uninstalled and click Apply. Then set the filter to "All" and search for kernel-desktop-devel. Check the one I suggested that you install and click Apply.

If you wish to delete the existing VM's, open your Home folder and set View to show hidden files. Then delete /.VirtualBox. Although, if these VM's worked fine before, there is no reason that they should not continue to be fine.

(The commands that I asked you to run on the CLI, produced information that was readily available from the GUI Software Manager. However, the CLI produces an output that can more easily be posted here.)

Jim