yast hosed in 9.1 - help

Hi, I was installing an rpm that said it required popt - not having a suse disc with me I d'l a popt rpm and installed it with rpm. Since then yast will not run. Text mode errors out with the fact that the ncurses is installed but not working properly and that I need to install yas2-ncurses. Graphical mode wont run at all. Problem is that without yast I do not seem to be able to correct the problem. Any suggestions much appreciated. TIA F