How do I recapture exclusive control similar to XP?

Hi all, I've been using Win10 (Swedish) administrating my wife's firm the better part of 2016, (XP at home). And gone from disliking M$ to loathing them mainly due to 10s built in crappy apps, telemetry encroachment, illegal spying, illicit changing of settings, stealing bandwidth and so on. Totally fed-up with M$ repulsive arbitrariness and one click from migrating to Linux I stumbled over this forum and found your info useful, knowledge extensive and tone friendly. I, of course, want to save labor, time and expenses staying with Windows but M$ degenerated sense of decency and lately behavior are not acceptable.

If users want/need all the fancy stuff offered by 10… well, by all means, that's OK. But I for one doesn't need nor want that, in my opinion, useless M$-garbage. M$ products never been and never will be my first choice (except for M$O 2007 and higher & a well stripped OS). What I want and need is to completely remove every redundant app and function. Please bear with my English since it's not my native language. On to my queries.

I just read; “You can also schedule the update to be installed at a specific time. Even so, Microsoft is giving users even more control over the update process. ”… that might be true for all versions except the Swedish. I can postpone the install for about 24h only. The specific time is by default set to 17:45 (5:45 PM) and no matter what alternative time I choose it reverts to 17:45, without exception. Annoying? Yes, no doubt! Compared to XP I'd say that we have been deprived the rightful control over our personal property! How do I recapture exclusive control similar to XP?

As a European I quite understand you.
There are several things you can do to reduce the impact of M$ in your Privacy concerns.
Regarding Internet, you can set the connection as "Metered" so Windows will not get Updates. You may disable in Services the Windows Update, so you do not receive any more updates.
Also in Services you can disable some Services.
You can remove most of the Apps from Store. see Apps - Uninstall in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums
In Settings> Privacy , you can Disable things you do not need.
Cortana, you can disable in Registry.
Store, you cam remove it in Registry.
Alternatively, you may consider to go to Win 7, will almost work with newer Hardware.
So far I can see, the future of Windows will be more and more similar to Google Android and its Store and it will be more and more intrusive looking more and more for what you are Searching & Looking for, so that they can provide people with the right Software Solutions.
That is all a question of how to make money.