You know how when you click an drag the mouse over text it highlights it, then you can copy/paste/ect whatever with that text? Well, dumbass microsoft made so many stupid features that I have a hard time selecting the text I want. For example, instead of starting where I first clicked and ending where I let go of the mouse, it automatically grabs the entire word I started on and the entire word I ended on, or if I were to say, only want to copy the first letter of a 3 letter word I'd have to first select the entire word, fiddle with the mouse a bit, then drag backwards until only the first letter is highlighted. Does anyone know how to turn all this dumb "helper" selection features off, and leave only the from-start-to-finish selection on?

That's not possible afaik but I've learned to live with it:
Drawing the selection backwards works better most of the time. Also moving back and forth sometimes gets rid of the automation.
And if all else fails use shift + arrow keys.

You can turn off "When selecting, automatically select entire word" in the Advanced part of options.