I tried to search the forum for some thread on this issue, but couldn't find any... and I need some help!

Today my N9 suddenly started to refuse to install or uninstall anything. When trying to install from the Store, I get an "Unable to install due to an unresolved error" (I'm translating this from Italian, so sorry if it's not the exact wording). Same with deb installation from downloads/file manager. In Settings/Applications/Manage Applications I have a weird "No software installed" grey text on white background instead of the usual list of installed programs.

I tried to enable developer mode (luckily I already enabled it once in the past, so I didn't need to install any package, just enable it) to have access to the terminal, and tried a "apt-get -f install" after becoming root. This is what I get:

Again, some sentences are in Italian on my device, I tried to translate them as accurately as I could.

Does anyone have any idea about what's going on? How can I solve this issue?

Thanks in advance.

Sorry for the bumping...

It seems to me this is problem with the list of installed programs... especially seeing that in Settings/Applications/Manage applications the list of installed packages is empty. On my kubuntu machine I'd usually solve it with a 'sudo apt-get -f install' but this is not working... how can I reconfigure the package list? Even 'dpkg --reconfigure' isn't working (command not found, and I'm not sure I remember it exactly).

Wish I could help you out, but instead I can only post that I'm experiencing the same issue, and I noticed it only yesterday. My list of installed applications in the Settings menu is empty, as well.

At least I'm not alone!
Let's hope somebody can figure out what's going on, I'm out of ideas.
I would like to avoid hard resetting... but should I do it, will on-device backup really backup everything? Especially SMS messages, without Ovi Suite I still couldn't make a backup of those.

How long do you want to be without a fully functioning N9?

If a short time, make a backup from the phone, extract that backup and reflash your phone...

Then put the backup back on your phone and let it restore...

If the problem comes back then a bug report should be opened.

Good Luck.

I'm willing to wait a little bit because I KNOW that on a Linux machine this shouldn't be an issue so serious to force a full format/reflashing. It should just need a command in a terminal.

Reflashing and hard-resetting would have the same outcome? I never flashed before, I wouldn't want to risk to brick my phone.

Reflashing and hard resetting would not be the same thing or have the same outcome...

I have flashed my phone more times than I can count... It's a massively safe method...

Ok, I made another discovery: installing and uninstalling packages from terminal using dpkg works flawlessly. So the issue is not related to what I thought it was... what else could be the responsible?

Think I'm gonna go the flashing way, wish me good luck :P

I made a backup to proceed with the flash, but I noticed it has a very small size (the phone says it is about 150 megabytes, on my windows file manager my /.backups folder contains files for about 80 megabytes).

What does it really backup? Are SMS messages in there?

I also copied the whole content of MyDocs folder as a full backup, so I'm sure at least photos, wallpapers and music are there.

Before proceeding, I'd like another clarification not present in the threads I read. I'm using this post as a guide on the flash process. It says I can flash only rootfs (this should leave untouched my personal settings, am I right?) or also eMMC (which would completely wipe away everything, I suppose). Do i need to flash eMMC too?