How do I efficiently transfer photos from iPhone to a Windows 11 PC without using iCloud for Windows?

I recently got a Windows 11 laptop and activated OneDrive to get the files and photos off my Windows 10 PC. In those Windows 10 and earlier days I would connect a cord to my iPhone and my PC, open up Pictures/Files/ & the folder of choice and copy from phone to PC.

Now I have more photos to transfer, but on the Windows 11 laptop that option didn't come up for me yesterday. Instead a pop-up suggestion appeared suggesting iCloud for Windows. So I installed the app on my PC, and now I think everything is screwed up.

The iCloud for Windows app is VERY slow. It doesn't display all of the photos I want to see, when I scroll to a trip i took earlier in 2024, all I see is a blank white screen around the date while it tries to display thumbnails of the photos. Then, when a batch finally appear, I click on some of these to copy over into a folder on my PC, but it takes several minutes just to copy over a batch of 10 photos. AND then, iCloud displays a duplicate of these photos in the app.

I think part of the slowness is that OneDrive is simultaneously trying to sync these same photos.

I read a support article on this topic that has me confused. It reads: "To download photos from iCloud to your PC without automatically syncing them back to the cloud, open

"iCloud for Windows" on your PC, navigate to your iCloud Photos folder,

select the photos you want to download, and simply download them to a

local folder on your PC; do not enable the "iCloud Photos" option within iCloud for Windows settings to prevent automatic syncing

"Simply" this wasn't simple. When I went into the iCloud for Windows settings it warned me that I would lose all photos if I de-selected the iCloud photos option.

Does anyone know what I should do now?

[Re-Titled by Moderator]