You opened an email attachment that you probably shouldn’t have opened and now your computer is running slow and other weird things are happening. Your bank called you and said there’s been strange activity on your account and your ISP just null routed all of your computer’s traffic because they claim it’s now part of a zombie botnet. And all of this and it’s only Monday.

If your computer has been compromised and infected with a virus or other malware, you need to take action to prevent your files from being destroyed and to prevent your computer from being used to attack other computers. Here are the basic steps you need to take to get back to normal after being hacked. Has your smartphone been hacked? Here's what to do.

To break the connection that the hacker is using to “pull the strings” on your computer, you need to isolate it so that it cannot communicate on a network. Isolation prevents it from being used to attack other computers and prevents the hacker from continuing to obtain files and other information. Unplug the network cable from your PC and turn off the Wi-Fi connection. If you have a laptop, there is often a switch to turn off the Wi-Fi. Do not rely on this being done via software, as the hacker’s malware may tell you that something is turned off when in fact it is still connected.

If your computer has been compromised, you should turn it off to prevent further damage to your files. After you have turned your computer off, you should remove the hard drive and connect it to another computer as a secondary non-bootable drive. Make sure the other computer has up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spyware. You should also probably download a free spyware removal tool or a free rootkit detection scanner from a reputable source such as Sophos.