This may not be helpful nor a viable solution for everyone, but all my Windows issues, including this one, simply evaporated by just no longer using Windows.
This may not be what some people want to hear but I digress. The horror stories I'm hearing of updates still to this day breaking systems and deleting user files make me glad I left and never looked back. Linux Mint, among others is a solid OS and even runs most Windows games as good, if not better than Windows itself does, without the telemetry, bloat, and insane amount of broken updates.
Worth a shot for anyone willing to take the dive! Mint is also very familiar to long-time Windows users such as myself so it really feels very comfortable to use and the small differences you get used to quickly.
Cheers!
I have used many operating systems in the past, and I can say almost all of them are better then Windows at being operating systems. However, for a vast majority of people, windows is required, so this solution is not a valid one in most cases. If you don't play games, need prefect compatibility with word/excel, are a .Net developer, or use one of the many windows only pieces of software for your work, then I say give it a shot. However gaming alone will keep most people locked into windows.
P.S. Yes, you can run windows games on Linux. But the setup is work, and I don't agree with the comment that it will run "most" games as good or better. With some work, it will run many games.
I definitely agree, it won't be ideal or even possible for everyone, just throwing it out there for anyone who maybe wasn't aware there were other options.
As for gaming, yes for 100% compatibility Windows is still king. However, Steam's Proton (Wine fork designed for game support) is changing that greatly and it's built into the Steam app, so with few exceptions, it's actually quite seamless. I would say roughly 75% of the games in my library that I enjoyed that weren't native Linux ran perfectly via Steam's Proton. Most of the other 25% were games by big greedy companies that I didn't really care to support anyways (and even some of those reportedly work with tweaks if you have the patience for it). protondb.com is a great resource in that regard. I even had one edge case where a game (Dark Souls PTDE) absolutely refused to run on Windows 10 and I had completely given up hope on ever seeing my save file again, but ran it on Linux with no issues. To say that I was overjoyed would be an understatement. :D
Most games rated gold or higher work out of the box as if on Windows, thanks to Proton. Without Proton, I can agree that it tends to be a lot of work. Thank you, Valve! <3