Installing software center ubuntu

Okay so I recently had some problems with ubuntu software centre where if I opened it from the dashboard it would open up, but only display a white screen. Nothing happened, so if I then clicked the 'x', it would ask me if i would like to force close the non responding software centre.

To get round this I've been opening the software centre via terminal which seems to let it work fine.

But i needed it working normally and after lots of attempts I couldn't figure it out so decided to just un-install and reinstall it.

Un-install worked fine, but now for the reinstall. When i type into terminal

sudo apt-get install software-center

I get this back;

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package software-center is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'software-center' has no installation candidate

any ideas? Thanks :)

Ubuntu 12.04

You need to type

sudo apt install gnome-software

to install software center.

Like @dobey said, you should give the command sudo apt-get update a whirl. You may have a problem with your apt-cache and as such, you will have problems installing things.

Run the command sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade. This will check for any and all updates/upgrades, hopefully fixing your system.

Once this runs, try running @sebastian_k's answer, sudo apt-get install software-center*. This will get/install anything and everything that Ubuntu Software Center needs to run.