I see what you mean about XP, quite a lengthy list if I may say so.
I managed to get rid of quite a few of these, but not of all. Not yet. (The Search function is still not really working, and I couldn't bring the DOS back to life, as it should still be there, lurking in deep waters)
I didn't run into some of the other issues you mentioned, so I gather I should knock on wood. (Especially the part with the My folders, probably because I regard them as a bane for humanity) But I have met some other "options that do want to help you, but which turn to be really harassing in the end" you haven't spoke about, so I guess we are even. (Such as my keyboard going to and fro from Azerty to Qwerty, some accessibility wizards opened by pressing five times the caps key for example, a save option for hard drives which destroys Mozilla settings files, and so on. (Strange that only Mozilla files would be affected out of 40 gigas of data, isn't it?)) I should stop the list here, as someone else will likely add a few other items to it.