Um, iirc it was Win8? I’ve had to open a couple Win10 installs since then (mostly to prep the machine for a Linux install) and I can tell it’s only gotten worse.
Back then I could probably hack a Windows install down to my preferences in a week or so, disabling or removing as much bloat and spyware as possible — but the amount of hoops I had to jump through to have a tolerable system was just becoming oppressive.