dpkg: error: you must specify packages by their own names, not by quoting the names of the files they come in

Question

I'm in need of some help again :-)

I wanted to get my fingerprint sensor working on my HP 470 ProBook. Went through part of the tutorial here: https://balintbanyasz.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/get-validity-vfs-495-fingerprint-reader-working-in-ubuntu-14-04/

I bailed out after converting the RPM to DEB and trying to install it but getting a bunch of warnings. It's not worth the hassle to get my system mangled. It's working fine. Apart from that sensor. Well.... was working fine :-D

Running apt remove doesn't uninstall the package.

sudo dpkg --remove --force-all validity-sensor-setup_4.5-119_amd64.deb

Gives me the error below:

dpkg: error: you must specify packages by their own names, not by quoting the names of the files they come in

What do I do now?

Thanks for you advice!

edit 1: When "dpkg - |grep validity-sensor" is run, it shows:

iHR validity-sensor-setup 4.5-119 amd64 Validity Finger Print Service 

How do I look into a deb file to see what it is doing?

I am using 20.04 btw.

edit 2: When running

sudo apt remove validity-sensor-setup

it just says:

E: The package validity-sensor-setup needs to be reinstalled, but I can't find an archive for it.

edit 3:

When I run

sudo dpkg -r remove validity-sensor-setup

the terminal reports:

dpkg: warning: ignoring request to remove remove which isn't installed
dpkg: error processing package validity-sensor-setup (--remove):
 package is in a very bad inconsistent state; you should
 reinstall it before attempting a removal
Errors were encountered while processing:
 validity-sensor-setup

edit 4:

This at least gave some more output:

sudo dpkg --remove --force-all validity-sensor-setup
dpkg: warning: overriding problem because --force enabled:
dpkg: warning: package is in a very bad inconsistent state; you should
 reinstall it before attempting a removal
(Reading database ... 242917 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing validity-sensor-setup (4.5-119) ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/validity-sensor-setup.postrm: line 5: sbin/insserv: No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing package validity-sensor-setup (--remove):
 installed validity-sensor-setup package post-removal script subprocess returned error exit status 127
Errors were encountered while processing:
 validity-sensor-setup

edit 5:

Ok, so when I:

sudo dpkg -e validity-sensor-setup_4.5-119_amd64.deb

as per here Another package problem

then the subdirectory DEBIAN is created and some files are dropped in that subdirectory. The postrm file contains the following:

#!/bin/bash
RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
export RPM_INSTALL_PREFIX
sbin/insserv etc/init.d

Any advice would be greatly appreciated... in the meantime I will try and soldier on.