I bring up emacs with emacs -q. I type M-x vm-mail. I get this error:
vm-mail: Cannot open load file: vm-reply.el

Tracing reveals that emacs is trying to run vm-mail-internal, which is
an autoloaded function from vm-reply.el (it should be autoloading from
just vm-reply, which is what it is set to before running
bbdb-insinuate-vm). I couldn't figure out exactly where the
autoloading changes, since things seem to work OK if I start
edebug-ing.

My .vm contains only:
(require 'bbdb)
(bbdb-initialize)
(bbdb-insinuate-vm)

I have the VM package (Version: 7.03-1) installed.

If I comment out bbdb-insinuate-vm, the error doesn't occur (of
course, then there is no bbdb support). Here is a workaround. Leave in
the bbdb-insinuate-vm. Type M-x vm. Then hit q to quit from VM, if
desired. Then type M-x vm-mail. This will now work.

Raj

Oops, there was an error in the workaround. The solution is to type
M-x vm, then M-x load-library vm-reply RET, then M-x vm-mail. Another
way is to put the line

(load-library "vm-reply")

in .vm before the bbdb-insinuate-vm line.

I've had VM and BBDB installed for a while and not hit this bug, so
I'm not sure what caused it. I think it may have started when I
uninstalled emacs20 (I've been using emacs21 for a while so I wasn't
really using emacs20). I've uninstalled and reinstalled VM and BBDB
both with no effect.

Raj

Thanks for the problem report, and sorry it has just been sitting
around for so long.

Do you happen know if this is still a problem with the latest bbdb
(2.35.cvs20080316-5) and emacs23?
I don't use vm so it is hard for me to try to replicate the issue.