"Electrostatic discharge can cause two different kinds of damage in a chip, and ultimately, in your computer. First, there are immediate, or catastrophic, failures. As the name implies, these failures occur immediately after the chip has been damaged, causing a catastrophic failure in not only the part, but also the PC. If, for example, you install a new stick of RAM without taking the proper precautions to avoid ESD (which will be covered in the next section), you may soon discover that your computer will not begin or finish its boot sequence. You realize that something is seriously wrong because your computer will no longer start, but you cannot pinpoint the exact problem. Sure, you know that your computer was working before you installed the new stick of RAM, but there is a chance that if you take out that stick, your problem will not be solved. It is possible that you induced a charge through another component in your system without even realizing it."