Thanks Mick,
I completely removed all the Virtualbox packages and reinstalled from the repository. Still problems I suppose the suggestion was to purge all the virtualbox packages from the repo, than trying to install the one provided by oracle. BTW this is the suggestion I would give you.
Mick In desperation I removed all Virtualbox packages again with the package manager, then purged all instances of Virtualbox as suggested by Brian
I then reinstalled from the repository and the package manager responded with the following errors: virtualbox subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 virtualbox-dkms dependency problems - leaving unconfigured virtualbox-qt dependency problems - leaving unconfigured I have had a look at the Oracle site but it appears that they do not yet provide packages for Utopic - only Trusty is mentioned. It appears to be the same as the one in the repository? Thanks Bob