Few days ago, I re-installed VLC which was removed accidentally. Suddenly, my laptop turned off because of my battery, so VLC was not installed correctly and caused a problem when running APT command with error message: "E: The package vlc needs to be reinstalled, but I can't find an archive for it.".


I have never encountered this error message before. Well, I copied the error message to Google search and fortunately, Google gave me everything including the solution for this error message.


And here is the solution:
  • sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq NAME
Well, I didn't forget to change NAME with the problematic package in this case, vlc. So, the command should look like this:
  • sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq vlc
Once, VLC completely removed, type this command to install VLC again:
  • sudo apt-get install vlc
If everything does well, APT can now be used as usual.

Good luck!