Unable to transfer files to my PC

I am having an extremely difficult time transferring pictures that exist only on my phone to my PC. Here is a summary of the issues:

iTunes - phone briefly showed up in iTunes before I accidently clicked the eject button. Since then, it won't show up. I granted permissions when the phone was first connected; no additional prompts are displaying on the phone for permission.

Apple Devices App - Keeps saying connect device. It IS CONNECTED!!!!

Windows File Explorer - Launching automatically when the phone is connected. File Explorer will randomly close the internal storage folder and then opens it back up after a few minutes. When I try a bulk transfer from one of many folders, the transfer starts out fine and then just quits with no error. File Explorer will often show internal storage is empty.

Photos App - Can see my pictures, but cannot copy and paste. If I click add, I have ZERO flexibility over where to put the pictures. They will go to a new folder on OneDrive. I don't want that.

According to Apple Support, file manager is not the way to transfer files. Apple Support setup an in store appointment for me. The tech who assisted me called over a co-worker and it just happened to be someone I had previously worked with on an unrelated issue. What do they say? "File Manager is how I transfer the files. I have not heard of Apple Devices."

I reached back out to text support out of frustration because it is apparent that one folder which has 500 images in (actually only 250, but because the live photo feature was turned on, every picture has been duplicated --- IMG4401.JPG., IMG4401.MOV, IMG4402.JPG, IMG4402.MOV and so on...

I had a call with tech support. They could not figure out iTunes or Apple Devices and reiterated that file explorer is not the way to do this. They asked me to open the photos app on my computer. Got the images to show up --- every single image (2000+). Why so many? I had an Android phone before and kept everything on my phone and never used the cloud. Switched to the iPhone and cloud backup was on by default.

Not enough storage in the cloud, so half of the pictures are on the cloud and half are on the device. I have a 500G external hard drive. THIS is where I want to put everything. With the file explorer message, I can only do 10 (maybe 20 at a time) and I'm copying duplicates.

I did not know about this live photo feature, so every picture I've taken since Oct 2024 until now has been processed as a live photo. There has simply got to be a better way to do this. I have tried different USB cables, different USB ports, and have reset the location settings which supposedly resets the USB settings. NOTHING is working.

Now what?

iPhone 16 Pro Max, IOS 18.4