I'm having a hard time downloading my pictures/videos from the cloud to my PC. They used to automatically download. Now the only way it will let me download/remove these from my phone

Desperately need help getting my pictures & Videos OFF of my phone and ICloud and transfer them to my PC!!!

MY photos used to automatically download to my PC when I plugged my phone to my PC.

Now not only does it not automatically download, the only way I've found I can download any of my pictures or videos is if i go to my iCloud from my PC and manually select each file to download.

And then from my phone, delete them.

With over 2,000 pics & videos you can imagine how frustrated, tidious, and time consuming this is!

I've read everything I could find in this topic, but nothing seems to work!

I don't know why it used to be so easy and now it's impossible! And it seems to have changed since I upgraded my iCloud storage.

Once I did that, it seems like alk my pictures & videos are locked in the cloud unless like I said, click & select 1 by 1 (it won't even let me select more than 1 at a time and there's no option (like there used to be to delete them after I've downloaded them).

It took over an hour for me to get about 15 pictures and maybe 1- 20 second video clip downloaded to my PC.

There has to be an easier way!

There MUST be something I'm missing and doing wrong!

I do have the cloud app downloaded on my PC.. As well as iTunes!

If anyone can help me, I would be Ever SO GRATEFUL! My phone (64G) is full, my cloud is full (even with the upgrade) and l just want to clear it all out and save my families memories and not make a huge mistake and lose everything in the process!