recommend any guides to removing as much bloat as possible? currently takes a solid minute or two to start up and even shut down..

Download CCleaner and remove any programs you don't use, especially all Microsoft's bullshit from their store (things like games you don't play, tools you don't use ie calendar, etc). Then disable everything on startup that you don't use (for me it's things like spotify, java update, steam, etc). If it's a home PC and you aren't worried about other people being on it, disabling password/pin helps because there's just less screens to go through for startup.
If you're curious what a program does and if you need it, use https://www.shouldiremoveit.com/
It looks like there's also some information on their site about removing bloatware; I've never read through it though so I have no idea how good or bad it is.
Another thing you can do is download Malwarebytes and run a full scan in safe mode, just to make sure you don't have any malware messing around in your system.
Another thing that helps is running an adblocker, it saves a lot on load times and cache while using internet browsers. I use ublock origin, but I'm sure all the top ones work relatively similar.

This post was edited by zell1luk on Jun 11 2019 04:01pm

Thanks man, much appreciated.

You mean all the useless programs you can disable through task manager startup manager?

Yes and preinstalled software