What does HackerNews think of RetroBar?
Classic Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP, Vista taskbar for modern versions of Windows
Its portable and gives your taskbar look of Windows 98 -> Vista.
For things that are relatively useful to keep like Windows Explorer, I try the numerous registry tweaks that remove features I don't like (for example, OneDrive integration). Couple this with Tron and similar scripts.
Installing an LTSC edition would obviously be nice, but it's hard and expensive to get to get (see [1] - the general consensus seems to be that you need to go through a VAR, and then buy an LTSC license alongside some cheap shopping basket fillers to get above the minimum number of licenses limit). When it's available, it makes the above "paving over" process much easier than a retail/pro edition.
[0]: https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar
[1]: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-do...