The invisible PC killer from the '90s is still around—and most people don't know it

Published Sep 9, 2026, 6:00 PM EDT Monica J. White is a journalist with over a decade of experience in covering technology. She built her first PC nearly 20 years ago, and she has since built and tested dozens of PCs. PC hardware is her main beat, and graphics cards and the GPU market at large are her main area of interest, but she has written thousands of articles covering everything related to PCs, laptops, handhelds, and peripherals. From GPUs and CPUs to headsets and software, Monica's always willing to geek out over all things related to computing. Outside of her work with How-To Geek, Monica contributes to TechRadar, PC Gamer, Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, SlashGear, Whop, and Digital Trends, among others. Her ultimate goal is to make PC gaming and computing approachable and fun to any audience. Monica spends a lot of time elbow-deep in her PC case, as she's always making upgrades, testing something, or plotting out her next build. She's the go-to tech support person in her immediate circle, so she's never out of things to do. Whenever she has spare time, you'll find her gaming until the early hours and hanging out with her dog. The early days of people having internet in their homes were pretty wild. Viruses were pretty much everywhere, and unlike now, many users had no clue what to do with them. I was a tween in the early '00s, but I remember intervening when my mom's PC had what felt like hundreds of them, with pop-ups and ads covering up the entire desktop, impossible to remove. Annoying and potentially hazardous as those viruses were in the '90s and the '00s, there was a much bigger PC killer in town, and it's one that's still around to this day. I'm talking about static electricity. You could carry thousands of volts without realizing it Your PC could feel a shock that you couldn't I'm one of those people who get zapped by static electricity each time I touch a doorknob, so I'm no stranger to the concept. Even then, static electricity is easy to underestimate, because you mostly just notice these tiny little zaps, if anything at all. But under the right conditions, your body can build up thousands, even tens of thousands, of volts. This is especially easy in a dry climate, or in a moderate climate during the winter when the heaters are running. That was a particularly nasty combo in the '90s, when beige PCs were often sitting in carpeted bedrooms and offices. (Did you know that you shouldn't keep your PC on carpet? No? Well, you do now.) Weather conditions aside, the important part is that this doesn't make static electricity dangerous to you (phew), because the amount of energy involved is tiny, and each zap lasts a split second. Your PC's components are a different story. Sensitive electronics can get damaged by electrostatic discharge (ESD), at voltages that are nowhere near what you can actually feel. You might not notice static discharge, but your PC can be affected at a tiny fraction of what it takes for you to experience that sensation. The TL;DR is you could touch a part of your PC and discharge static into it without knowing. This makes static a super-stealthy ninja PC killer that was a big threat back in those days, arguably bigger than most viruses. Sometimes the PC kept working Credit: Justin Duino / How-To Geek At the risk of making a blanket statement, most modern viruses can be pretty stealthy compared to the stuff we dealt with in the '90s and '00s. Back then, many were up in your face, just the way I described above. Some still are, too, but most scams involve trying to fool the user into thinking they're on a legitimate platform, or working in the background without being detected. So, viruses kind of announced themselves back then. If you had one, you probably knew. But static damage can be much sneakier. A sufficiently strong ESD event might kill a component outright, and with component prices as they are right now, that can quickly turn into a $2,000+ mistake. It's not always so dramatic, though. Your PC or your components may sustain some damage, but not enough to stop working outright. They might throw errors or fail earlier than they otherwise would've, though. The PC upgrade boom gave static plenty of opportunities Every new RAM stick meant touching exposed electronics Credit: Monica J. White/How-To Geek The other reason static was such a perfect '90s PC killer is that people were opening their PCs up quite a lot. Not everyone, of course. But there was just more to be done inside a PC compared to now; you could add a sound card, add a modem, replace drives ... Still doable now, but much less necessary. Every such upgrade meant handling exposed parts, circuit boards, and contacts. Often in that carpeted environment I talked about above. Viruses needed infected files or disks to get in, but static discharge only needed you to touch the wrong thing without grounding yourself. That's why manufacturers and repair pros took anti-static precautions so seriously. RAM sticks, expansion cards, and motherboards were all supposed to be handled by the edges, kept in anti-static bags, and installed while you were grounded to the chassis. Those rules still apply to this day. The invisible PC killer never actually went away Ground yourself before reaching inside Credit: Goran Damnjanovic / How-To Geek You'll often find me going on and on about how cleaning your PC is the best $0 upgrade you can give it. That was true in the '90s when PCs were beige and loud, and it's true now when they're filled with RGB lighting and cooled with AIOs. The problem is that doing this the wrong way can still very much damage your PC. It's not like magically, over the years, static became a non-issue. It's just that most people who actually open up their PCs are more aware of it now than they may have been back then. I'll say it again: Please, do clean your PC. Just ground yourself properly first. The scariest PC threat was 100% invisible At a time when viruses were less than sneaky, static electricity was the cause of death for many a PC. These days, the tables have somewhat turned; many viruses are far from obvious, and static is the same way, as ever. In both cases, exercise caution and you'll never have to worry about either one of those two, vastly different, issues.