MC only here too. On Amiga Directory Opus (DOpus) was amazing. Their windows port came late and isn't so essential, though I can't imagine how people have the patience to do any file management with awful normal explorer. Luckily not a worry of mine, I live in the nix/nux terminals.
1997, also the year when I got 10Mbit connection at home, which was unheard of at that time. Also, came from Amiga, skipped the msdos and windows almost completely.
Do the settings once. Keep a copy of ~/ and /etc handy. Apply all settings in one go at will. Stop fiddling around, making a fuss about nothing and just keep on using it.