Windows has a lot of overhead. It also doesn’t have the capability to run common NAS filesystems like ZFS (to my knowledge) which adds good redundancy and performance increases. If you really wanted to run a Windows file server, you could look at Windows server as it’s built more for the task but you’d run the risk of running an unlicensed Windows Server product which Microsoft doesn’t like.

My advice would be to keep what you have currently and build something, probably virtually, that runs on a common Linux NAS OS like TrueNAS and see how you like it. Once you install TrueNAS, you don’t have to manage it from a shell if you don’t want to. It has a very nice web GUI.

uBlock origin + Pihole. uBlock covers just about everything on your PC but I mainly use Pihole for mobile devices and as a “catch all net”