Updating any plugin on my site causes wp-admin/plugins.php to not load

I don’t know what is going on with my site, but every time I try to update any plugin something gets screwed up, I get a confirmation message that the plugin update went through, and then when I try to go back to plugins. all I get is white screen… the rest of the wp-admin works fine… only the plugins settings page.

when I restore plugins directory to a state before the update, functionality returns again.

how can I overcome the fact that wordpress literally will not allow me to complete any plugin updates.

-Matt