Now my question is: Is there any way to remove all those crappy apps I don't want that are constantly running in the background? Especially OneDrive, but also mail, calendar and others? Also, is there any way to remove the Edge browser? I don't like how MS is forcing all this crap on me, while at the same time collecting anything and everything they can. Assuming your personal data collection assistant is running. Quick tip though, if you right click the taskbar and hide the search, it still lets you search just by typing once you click the start button. Using search in windows explorer seemed to work though. To restore, make sure the folder is named exactly as before. If you locate the folder it's files are in (C:\Windows\SystemApps\_cw5n1h2txyewy), and end the task in task manager while very quickly renaming the folder before it comes back (don't delete any characters, just add an underscore or something, or you probably won't get it back easily) it will prevent Cortana from working. I found a way to fully disable it, since normally it pops right back up if you kill the process.
Even with everything disabled the Cortana process sits there consuming roughly 40MB of ram, doing who knows what.
