!!Software issues, conflicts and things you should try to avoid  
!Windows Issues
Always turn off the messaging service right after installing any version of Windows. 
!ESRI (Arc) issues
Arcgis 9.1 has a service pack which needs to be run for it to function properly on a computer with IE 7 installed.  
Arcview 3.x is the lates version of arcview, but meets the same requirements as any other version and people who need it installed generally don't care which version of 3 it is, so long as it has the right extensions installed and the license key code works. 
Arcgis needs to be ran as administrator. Sometimes it suffices that the user merely have administrator rights, other times the user must actually be administrator.  No one knows why this is.
!Adobe (Macromedia)
Macromedia software needs to be registered once for each product installed. 
Adobe Acrobat 5 should only be installed for the distiller. If Acrobat itself is installed, PDF's will not open from web browsers. 
!Java Problems.
http://mytime.wisc.edu requires a more modern version of java to run and will not function in Firefox (unless you use the IE tab extension)
!I can't find software!
Check [software_storage] or [useful_software]