Obligatory: you can improve your Windows experience by installing Linux.

Non snarky comment: you can disable driver craplets from auto-installing using group policy or the registry.

run gpedit.msc
Computer Configuration
> Administrative Templates
  > System
    > Device Installation

Prevent automatic download of applications associated with device metadata
= Enabled

That will set the following registry key:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Device Metadata]
"PreventDeviceMetadataFromNetwork"=dword:00000001

Lemmy hugged the site to death, but archive.org has some snapshots.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260517182405/https://corsirosenthalfoundation.org/instructions/

Given the current price of RAM and SSDs, I don’t see how a $200 laptop is even viable to sell. Unless it is barely scraping by on specs or comes loaded with craplets and spyware.

Just doing a quick search, all I’m seeing is stuff in the $350 range with 4 or 8 GB of RAM. I’m not familiar with the genre of games you play, but I don’t think they would run well on that. Or run at all. Haven’t even looked at the gpu or cpu specs.

I would try to find something used and compare specs against the min and recommended hardware requirements for the games you play.

Sweet Tech Jesus! It’s 3 and 1/2 hours long.