there is a program that makes windows 11 exactly like windows 7, it’s called StartAllBack:
www.xda-developers.com/startallback-review/

i switched to windows 11 recently, spent about a week battling all the bullshit, then found StartAllBack and it’s been beautiful.

i also recommend MalwareBytes “Windows Firewall Control”, which is actually free without pirating it… which i’m sure no one on here would ever do… but it lets you control exactly what programs can access the internet….
like, every time i open the file manager, explorer.exe tries to access the internet, i’ve been manually denying it for a while and it works exactly the same, so now i can just permanently disable it from going online….

but, StartAllBack is amazing, and everyone should have it… or really there should be an open source version by now….