dselect troubles

[Ron Forrester <rjf@zero-ping.com>]

I have somehow put dselect into a mode where it thinks there are many
packages to be removed, and many to be installed -- it got like this
despite the fact that I have not been through selecting packages for
removal and installation.

I believe it ended up like this as a result of my playing with the
apt-get install, upgrade, and dist-upgrade commands (okay, so I
shouldn't have done that).

My question is, is there anyway to reset the package cache (correct
terminology?) so that dselect is clean, i.e. does not believe there
are packages to remove and install -- preferrably sucj that I don't
have to walk through all 4000 packages (I have stable and unstable) by
hand trying to figure it out.

Thanks in advance!
rjf&