Something is wrong with my computer's OS (12.04 Precise Pangolin). I think the best solution is to do a clean install of 12.04 and re-install all the packages that have been added since January 2012.

I'm looking at AptOnCD and have it installed and when aptoncd is called and I click "Create" I get a list that is missing a lot of packages I have installed. For example: Gourmet Recipe Manager, Inkscape, and a few dozen others. (Text to Speech or TTS packages, for instance.) I see that aptoncd will let me add them.

My question then becomes: how can I determine which packages I have on this computer. Does the manner you propose know that packages must have dependency information included to be restored?

This is most puzzling. The more I try to find a way to fix a problem, the more distant the fix gets. I'm must be missing something here, but cannot seem to frame the question to get the support I need.

Thank you, Community, for some help.