Just gonna put in a note or two. Maybe it helps, maybe not.
First thing you should keep in mind is that most malware writers worth their salt, will check against the most popular A/V and malware catchers. It's why a good portion of them pass without getting caught by what you use to find them.
The next little odd ball you might like to remember is that the majority are caught because there is a signature out for them. Now A/V companies won't just write a sig because you alone are having problems. They will wait till the sig is needed by a lot of folks getting the same thing before writing one. No sig, no id and catching of the malware.
Zero days are notorious for getting mass spreads before sigs are written. Zero day by definition has no sig because the way they apply themselves isn't yet known so no defense exists against them.
One of the ways that's been tried is to use what is called heuristic analysis. The A/V attempts to look at actions caused by software for malware purposes. It causes a lot of false positives but is among the very few ways to catch a zero day. As example, a malware would be interested in loading a keyboard driver to spy on your usage, hoping to catch passwords at a secure site, which is typically where the money is. However, a game would also be one to install a key board driver so that keys will be understood by the game as a specific action. Both would turn up as red flags.
If you really want some protection, the cure is near as bad as the ailment. There is a program out called DeepFreeze. What it does is return your computer to the state of when the program was installed. This is good and bad. Any updates you got would be wiped in the process. However, any malware not present when the software is installed would be removed. You can at install allow some extra room for logs and updates but usually what is done is the OS is limited in it's space sizes and a new partition not guarded is put in for things like updates. There is a control panel of sorts where you can designate files to be added on a manual basis.
After having been nailed with a really bad worm that infected my home LAN, I realized that having computers directly share folders is a bad move. Now every computer on the LAN is independent with no shared connection. Instead what I use to share files is what is called a NAS.
The NAS (Network Accessible Storage) is something like an external drive, using RAID configuration for multiple hard drives. Mine is Linux based so no Win malware will connect through the LAN as the Linux simply will not take it. In this way I can pass files between computers without worry of worms.
For security purposes, use a router. Since almost all routers use a hardware firewall, they are not subject to software infections. However routers, like all other firewalls, only block one way. So one side of your net connection is still open. The majority of routers block incoming.
Software firewalls, usually block outgoing, with the exception of the default M$ firewall which blocks like a hardware in it's direction. It is in M$'s self-interest this is done. M$'s money comes from business licenses, not from your M$ tax when you buy a new computer. You only pay for that once. The datamining business wants to get your info and if the firewall is blocking out going it defeats that purpose. By all means, change the default software firewall to something (ANYTHING) else.
My typical setup for malware is
- Malwarebytes
- Antivir (a free updatable antivirus)
- COMODO software firewall (with antivirus)
- FireFox browser (with extensions)
I could go on with this but the reply is already fairly long.