TL;DR:
The Windows File Explorer is now dependent on Microsoft Recall being installed on Windows 11 24H2 editions and likely later.
This means that if you wish to use newer versions of the Window file explorer, you have to install recall on your system. Recall is a deeply-rooted, non-negotiable feature on all modern versions of Windows.
Solution
If you wish to strip out recall from your system, you are no longer able to use the built-in graphical file explorer and must use a third-party tool, and if you're not allowed to do that on the machine, then you are forced to have recall running on the system as it doesn't appear on any graphical settings pages.
The other solution is to prepare for transitioning into a free operating system such as GNU/Linux with distributions such as Linux Mint which is designed specifically for that transition. You can also run an older version of Windows and refuse to update.
Errata
Turns out that this issue has been exaggerated and that there are ways to disable co-pilot on Windows machines (or at the very least, command Windows to do so). Also it's debatable whether this program does any harm on non "copilot" computers but you can be the judge of that.
This really isn't possible to do accidently with user focused distros. I have been using Linux Mint for about 14 years without issue. I suggest Linux Mint to everyone. One can install steam if you want to game, many games work seamlessly, also emulators, lutris, wine, etc.
I've never ran into an issue I couldn't solve with google and a few minutes of following a tutorial. Also, Linux Mint has the best back-up tool, called timeshift. You let it create back-ups automatically, or do your own manual back-ups, and no matter what you do, you can easily revert back to that back-up with no consequences--Sometimes, if you really bork up your system, you'd need to boot from the USB drive to run timeshift to fix the computer, but again, very easy to google and execute.
I suggest downloading linux mint to a USB drive, and then running it from the USB drive for a bit to see what it is like. I prefer the cinammon desktop environment.
Uhh.
I was using Mint.