Can't install packages -- Do I need to re-install?
 

I installed Linux Mint 11 on my Mom's computer a while ago. I did this because I was getting tired of continuously re-installing windows. It has been running well, and things for the most part work well.

however, recently I have installed it on my fathers computer as well (Mint 13). I'm currently trying to setup a share between the computers and things are not working (the share will not mount). I can see the Mint13 computer in the Network list, I can click on it and I am shown a list of shares. However, when I click on the share name, it says that it is unable to mount the share.

I tried re-installing samba on my mom's computer but am noticing a lot of failed repository updates. I'm also getting 404 errors regarding archive and security. I found a post which stated the user changed them to old-releases in the sources.list file. I was able to install another package that I wasn't previously able to install (vim). But, when I go to install samba it says that there are two dependencies not installed (samba-common and libwbclient0). Both are installed but I think the installed version is newer than it is looking for.

I can't figure out why. I'm thinking I'm going to be forced into re-installing Mint. But, I don't want to because that means that I have to reinstall all the programs again, and that is a BIG pain in the butt.

Can someone please help me.

Mint 11 is obsolete and not supported anymore. This means that there will no bugfixes and, worse, no security updates for this version.
It is strongly recommended that you upgrade to a supported version, either Mint 13 (LTS version, supported until 2017) or Mint 15 (normal version, supported until January 2014).

I don't mind upgrading but everything that I'm finding is saying that I need to do a FRESH install, meaning re-installing all my packages again and re-configuring everything.

Is there not an easier way to do this?

Mint does not actively support upgrades from one version to the next. You can try that, but it is not unlikely that your system will break and you have to reinstall anyways.

At least you shouldn't have to reconfigure: the configuration files live in your home directory. If you really hate the idea of re-installing, even once every 5 years (Mint LTS), you could consider Mint's Debian edition. That's semi-rolling-release: install once and update once a month.

I did the reinstall. It was pretty painless. Luckily I had separated my /home directory to a separate partition. I just re-assigned the partition to /home without formatting and it picked up all of the program settings. So once I re-installed the packages (which didn't take long) everything was like it hadn't been re-installed.

Thanks!