The last time I counted, I'd done a clean Windows install eleven times in the past five years. Different machines, different reasons — a new laptop here, a wiped hard drive there, and one particularly chaotic day involving a failed update and some colorful language. And every single time, before I could even think about installing the things I actually wanted, I had to spend the first hour dismantling the things I didn't: Copilot camping in the taskbar, OneDrive begging for credentials, a parade of pre-installed apps I'd never opened and never plan to.