File transfer from iPhone to PC is super complicated.

Hi there. I am a Windows PC user and have been trying my best to transfer my pictures and videos to my PC from my iPhone XR since January. If i directly copy the files from the "DCIM" folders like "101APPLE" or any of that, it'll start copying a few and then would show an error message like "the device is not accessible". I then tried to "import pictures and videos" by right-clicking on the iPhone device displayed in the computer drives' screen and was able to successfully get everything into my PC (I guess I got all of it) but the images were in HEIC format so it wasn't of any use to me as they weren't readable. I uninstalled iTunes and removed the drivers thinking when I plug in the iPhone next time, it'll reinstall all the drivers on its own and I could start fresh. Sadly, when I tried to "import pictures and videos" for the second time, after changing the setting in "Photos" about keeping the option of picture format as "automatic" so that i can get everything in JPG ; I received the error message again . iTunes is practically of no use as there's no option for retrieving pictures or videos. I've also tried uploading it all into the iCloud and downloading it on my pc via the web browser and I noticed that some files were missing and MOV files that have slo-mo show lesser time (if its a 1 minute video in iCloud photos, the downloaded one would be of 15 seconds) . I also noticed that the data size of pictures I download from iCloud are significantly lower than the original file in the phone ( if original file is 2 MB, the downloaded file from iCloud would be 800 KB). Please tell me what to do about this as its very frustrating. Should I re-install iTunes hoping some driver gets installed along with it that'll help with the importing? Or isn't there another way to transfer files?