var lock issue right after installing JDK and soapUI on my machine

Question

I have been dealing with an issue all day here. I cannot seem to have apt-get work for anything whatsoever. I have been through several parameters here including trying these following solutions:

1. sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
2. sudo dpkg --configure -a
3. detect processes to see if I need to establish kill method
4. remounting r+w permissions and using chmod and/or chown methods
5. used rm -rf to remove lock files from directories (which I know is not the best solution)
6. tried using autoremove, autoclean, clean,....

I have tried many things and cannot find a proper solution. Is there a way to restore system settings and still keep home files?

Thanks everyone!