Bearsfolks,
You won't like this yet...
I've succeeded in acheiving my initial GOAL - fetching 15.7 GB (2012-2015) archives in the cloud for a client, all in full resolution, etc.
My methods were SLOW and DIRTY!!!
I basically created a Virtual Box VM using the official microsoft IE Test Virtual Disk Images (Available from WinXP to Win10 with Edge) and run quite well in Oracle Virtual Box on my modest Lenovo S11 Yoga 2.5 (I call it a 2.5 because it's not quite a 2 nor an 11S, it's like they refurbed it but forgot to put a serial number in the BIOS which leads me to determine verison based on HW) which is as I can tell a Haswell Chipset with a 2.5 Core i5 Dual Core, Quad Thread atop 12GB of RAM and a 480GB SSD Drive internally.
Once created it was super simple:
1.) Once the VM was up and running:
CPUs: 2
RAM: 2096
Swap File: 2095-2096
USB Support: 2.0
Physical Disk Size: 8GB Virtual Disk Size 128GB (Way too big but then it worked)
Local Folder Access: I mapped c:\local\archive\<customer name>\ to C:\Users\Documents\My Photos\iCloud Photos with full read and write support.
2.) Took a clean snapshot of the VM Image to use as a "NEXT INTERATION TESTING", no I won't leave everyone cold without a file based solution (may require installing various bits from archive, SFC, etc - I will keep this legal only, may even need a DONER Install Disk or i386 directory to expand the ._files to useable once again.
My next interation I will determine which files iCloud 5 and then 5.1 actually require from the Windows Media Player install (since it's just enabled / diabled, it must be stock files) - if it merely fails because it doesn't detect the files at all, but we don't care about that aspect (playback of media as there is no iTunes on Windows) I suppose Step #1 will be trick it with fake executables to get it going and then Step #2 - Create a Win32/64 thunk layter
1.) I Installed the latest version of iTunes Available
2.) I enabled Windows Media Player feature (without debug tracing, file monitoring, etc - Step #2)
3.) I downloaded and installed iCloud v5.1 (I think) and ran setup.
Once completed I just went to Start->Computer->iCloud Photos and from the Top Left Clicked Download Photos
This process took overnight.
So it was completed, backwards as all **** but completed.
I will document a proper solution after christmas, perhaps even some code to do the same thing without the interface.
-Mike