Trying to update LL 3.8 on a Dell 1545 with "replaced" HDD

[JanetBiggar]

So I'm trying to rehabilitate a Dell Inspiron 1545 whose HDD died by switching out the functioning HDD from a Dell Inspiron N5030 which I know was working.  The N5030 had a TV fall on the screen and so I felt best to use it's HDD in the 1545 rather than an external monitor with the N5030.

The Dell 1545 fired up fine and loaded the LL 3.8 that was on the N5030's HDD.  It kinda acted funny as the cut, copy, delete, paste menu kept popping up while I was navigating to the updates section.  Anyway I managed to get the updates and clicked on downloading them and after about 10 mins the battery ran out and I had not realized the charger was not plugged in properly (hence why it ran out of power).

When I plugged it into power the same "odd" menu would come up over what I was chasing, but I managed to get into updates again.  It fetched the updates and then when I clicked to download it came up with this message:

E:dpkg was interrupted you must run manually 'sudo dpkg--configure-a'  (this is what is looks like from the pic, however I can't be 100% sure of spacing...)

So I opened a terminal window and put this in (I didn't cut and paste it I typed it) and it says no command found.

My questions are;
1) since the HDD was running fine in the N5030 using an external monitor, is the "odd" acting because it's in a different computer?
2) Should I simply try doing a fresh install of LL 3.8 from my USB?
3) is it worth running the sudo command above if its shorter and if so what have I done wrong AND once I get the right command will it do it all itself?  I'm not really familiar with doing a lot of stuff in terminal.

[Ottawagrant]

I've had this happen to me, but under a different situation/problem. Here's something that should help:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/163200/e...onfigure-a
It's also possible a program is locking the package manager. Here's some other information that may help:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Packag...gProcedure
One other fix you may want to try is to open Synaptic, go to settings & try to refresh your repository. If you get an error message, follow the directions it gives you. I've swapped out hard drives with Linux Lite between computers many times. Have never had a problem. But I would tell you that if nothing else works you can't beat that new freshly installed OS smell.

[JanetBiggar]

Thanks Ottawagrant.  So far so good.  I see that I didn't have my spacing correct and thus your first link helped to sort that out.  I am currently running updates and so far the downloading and installing is working.

I'm really hoping this fixes the unusual behaviour I'm seeing of the various menu boxes popping up for no reason (sometimes the cut, copy, paste menu then other times the start menu, other times the reload menu).  I sure hope it's not anything to do with the HDD...

Once the updates finish I will see if its successful and otherwise do a re-install as the 2nd article is a bit over my head.