For me, both. I search for something generic, either an official manual, a bug report or a StackOverflow's answer pops up. I have a specific narrow question, I'm unable to google the answer, I ask, a more knowledgeable person appears and ties all the loose ends together in I way I have never thought of.
The latter. But I suppose it's typical. A given problem usually emerges for thousands of people so it's not surprising I was never the first to ask.