The air turned blue

I have spent my entire day trying to offload the photos off my iphone.  My own fault I suppose for just allowing the phone to swallow all the photos it could take since the start of 2019 without ever downloading them.. turns out that I have over 14,000 waiting to be removed from the phone.  I refuse to use icloud.. I know I am a dinosaur but I prefer not to keep my life 'out there' and didn't foresee this issue.  I tried doing as it said and use the 'photos' app which opens immediately upon linking the phone to the pc.  Sometimes I get this message.. other times it finds the 14K and allows me to direct it to a folder and then starts the process of downloading... but after 170 randomly selected photos it chokes and freezes throwing this pop up at me.  I have tried everything... photos app will not do it.  The next tack seemed straightforward.. to open the iphone as if you would a hard drive and download the folders of photos directly to  a designated folder on the pc.. the first time I did it.. all 30 folders transferred..empty!!!
The second time the first folder apparently downloaded... but only contained 150 photos of the 750 in there so I carried on taking 4-50 at a time and manually transferring them... that worked.. I managed 5 folders ... then came up for air.
In the meantime the whole reason I am doing this process is because my phone has jammed up due to being at full capacity.  So I checked the dates of the photos contained in the first folder and stared deleting the first two months worth of photos off the phone.. then fully deleting them. Only then did I realise that some had not actually downloaded as the folders on the iphone seem to be mixed images... so I have lost quite a few.. arghghghgh!!!  
I have spent all day doing this.. and still have not even put a dent on the storage on the phone.. how on earth do I get round this first world problem.. 
Itunes.. I don't have it on my new computer.. and have no idea if it can help me download all my photos or not having not used it for about 15 years I think it is doubtful but if there is anyone out there who knows if I can download photos off an iphone onto a pc (not MAc) with itunes I would love to know.

In other news.. it rained all day and my feet are cold!