Unable to upgrading using any package manager in 12.04

[ronnowoy]

Dear community,
I am expercing some prob;ems with updating my system using any of the package mangers that I have. I tried to upgrade from the command line with no avail. Here Is my code lines seen in all methods tried.

E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_precise_restricted _binary-amd64_Packages
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

Please help me. Thank you.

[SteveRiley]

This should take care of it:

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/*
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update

Now proceed with your desired install.

[ronnowoy]

This did not work for me. I am still having the same issues. The code that showed up when I entered in sudo rm/var/lib/apt/* was;
rm: cannot remove `/var/lib/apt/keyrings': Is a directory
rm: cannot remove `/var/lib/apt/lists': Is a directory
rm: cannot remove `/var/lib/apt/mirrors': Is a directory
rm: cannot remove `/var/lib/apt/periodic': Is a directory
Where do I go from here. Please advise. Thank you.

[SteveRiley]

Whoops, my bad. I omitted a few important switches. The first command should be:

sudo rm -rfv /var/lib/apt/*

Sorry about that!

[ronnowoy]

This worked great!! Thank you.