When I open the software center, I am told that I can not use it, for it is broken, and needs to be repaired. First I try to do this automatically, as I was offered. I enter a root password, and then the installation fails.

    installArchives() failed: reconfiguring packages...
reconfiguring packages...
reconfiguring packages...
reconfiguring packages...
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(Reading database ... 275048 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking wine1.4-i386 (from .../wine1.4-i386_1.4-0ubuntu4.1_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/wine1.4-i386_1.4-0ubuntu4.1_i386.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/usr/bin/wine', which is also in package wine1.5 1.5.5-0ubuntu1~ppa1~oneiric1+pulse17
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already
dpkg-deb: error: subprocess paste was killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/wine1.4-i386_1.4-0ubuntu4.1_i386.deb
Error in function: 
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of wine1.4-common:
 wine1.4-common depends on wine1.4 (= 1.4-0ubuntu4.1); however:
  Package wine1.4 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing wine1.4-common (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

What should I do now? First of all, I've tried reinstalling the center, but it failed due to the same 1.4 dependency as is laid out here. I've googled for help and although I don't understand linux at all, I've tried some suggestions: I've tried editing the dpkg status in /var/lib/dpkg/status which failed because the file could not be found. I've tried purging wine/* but that had unresolved dependencies as well. It's a giant mess.