How do I know when a question has become a second question?

Question

I have a question open here: What should I do about seeing the message "/boot/config-3.2.0-74-generic: No such file or directory"? which is specifically about the missing config file in /boot/* however my attempts to update and fix this have unpacked all sorts of other underlying issues. I have something like 8 or 9 updates to the question plus a long back and forth int he comments.

Having now ended up with a list of problem packages (one is mentioned in the question as part of the copy and past error message) I am unsure if asking about this list of problem packages is simply an extension of the existing question (although straying from the original point) or should be a fresh question which nevertheless acknowledges the former question.

I don't want to spam (or at least double post) but I don't want to make my question to broad.

How do I know when I have uncovered the need to answer a second (related) question? Or When is an update a new question?

Answer 1

A first step would be determine what the actual problem is. What you see might be a ton of symptoms of the same root cause, so determine the root cause and ask how to solve it. Then, you can post separate questions trying to fix individual symptoms, if you wish or if fixing the root problem seems to be very hard, or note them in the original post.