Trying to cut out unnecessary components from Windows is a pretty normal phase for most PC users to go through, but it's pretty pointless really.

Windows is purposefully engineered to be highly interdependent, which means there's very little that you can cut out without running into irritating little issues. Any software developed for Windows presumes a minimal but standard installation of programs and libraries, including things like notepad, Internet Explorer etc. This is why there's very little in Add/Remove Programs, other than little things like calc, wordpad etc. All these components account for a small fraction of a Windows installation.

You can pretty much do without everything in the Windows Components in Add/Remove Programs, but I wouldn't advise removing anything else.