There are several recurring topics where users keep asking new versions of the same problem.

Some of these are: 

- [anti-virus software and cleaning them up][1], 
- [solving boot problems][2],
- [freezing computers][3],
- troubleshooting hardware,
- benchmarking hardware,
- backup software,

Many topics would benefit from having a great up-to-date source of information, a [Community Wiki](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts/11741#11741). If a user tried most of those steps and still is having problems, then there might be something new going on.

This isn't a goal to create one "perfect" mega-answer, that we can use to close all the others as dupes, but rather to have **a more general guide** for users to follow and catch all the lowest hanging fruit.

The purpose of this question is:

 - to keep track of the progress,
 - to get suggestions for topics that could use such a question,
 - to manage some 'meta-ish' discussion, so we don't abuse the comments on the wiki questions,
 - requests from users for including certain information or sharing useful information to include



  [1]: http://superuser.com/questions/100360/what-to-do-if-my-computer-is-infected-by-a-virus-or-a-malware
  [2]: http://superuser.com/questions/230748/how-do-i-troubleshoot-problems-that-occur-during-boot
  [3]: http://superuser.com/questions/224496/how-do-i-create-a-memory-dump-of-my-computer-freeze-or-crash