Upgrade to Testing "Reading package lists... Error!"

[Brian <kimhick@yahoo.com>]

I am trying to upgrade an i386 system from lenny to testing and I keep running into this problem.  While running:

aptitude -f full-upgrade

I keep getting errors like this:

Reading package lists...  Error!
E: Malformed 2nd word in the Status line
E: Error occurred while processing billard-gl (UsePackage1)
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

I have been able to copy the old status file over 
(/var/lib/dpkg/status-old) and get things working again for a little while but then I get the error again with another package and sometimes on another word in the status line
(E: Malformed 3rd word in the Status line).

Anybody know of a fix or a work around on this?

Thanks,

Brian