iCloud Photos Doesn't Work with Symbolic Link Win11, Error 15

I have too many photos and videos in my iCloud to download to my C drive. Manually downloading 1,000 at a time is also far too time consuming and clunky.

I created a symbolic link to another drive. However, to do this you have to stop syncing and delete the iCloud Photos folder. When you create the symbolic link after that, Windows creates the folder "iCloud Photos". However, when re-enabling iCloud photos, I get the following error: "Unable to create a directory for iCloud Photos: Restarting your computer might resolve the issue. (Error 15)"

Does anyone know a solution? And why does iCloud no longer let you specify the folder to use? This is incredibly frustrating, and being able to specify a folder for something like iCloud to use is such a basic feature.

This is the guide I used: Change iCloud Photos Location on Windows … - Apple Community

Thank you!