I suspect this is a Windows issue, but adding ucsm in case it's not.
Apologies if it's OT.

My wife has the 50GB plan for iCloud, but now wants to have a copy of
all her photos on our home PC. Simple, I thought, install iCloud Photos
and let it do it's thing.

However, it seems to be stuck at ~12,000 photos sync'd and won't go any
further. There should be ~19,000. The iCloud taskbar icon says there
~4800 downloading.

Also, File Manager is now practically unusable. Only a handful of photos
have thumbnails and right-clicking on any of them freezes file manager
which eventually crashes. It's a been like this for about a day and
rebooted/restarted a few times.

CPU usage is minimal: icloud is using 25% and that's about it. There's
no network activity.

The overall aim is for her to able to look at photos on the PC (and
bigger screen) and to download and save some as local copies. We managed
to download a handful, but that's also not working now.

How to unstuck the process of syncing? And is File Manager just not up
to managing >12k files in one folder? Is there a way to optimise it? Are
there alternative file managers that would be better?

Am 25.06.23 um 11:45 schrieb Chris:
>
> I suspect this is a Windows issue, but adding ucsm in case it's not.
> Apologies if it's OT.
>
> My wife has the 50GB plan for iCloud, but now wants to have a copy of
> all her photos on our home PC. Simple, I thought, install iCloud Photos
> and let it do it's thing.
>
> However, it seems to be stuck at ~12,000 photos sync'd and won't go any
> further. There should be ~19,000. The iCloud taskbar icon says there
> ~4800 downloading.
>
> Also, File Manager is now practically unusable. Only a handful of photos
> have thumbnails and right-clicking on any of them freezes file manager
> which eventually crashes. It's a been like this for about a day and
> rebooted/restarted a few times.
>
> CPU usage is minimal: icloud is using 25% and that's about it. There's
> no network activity.
>
> The overall aim is for her to able to look at photos on the PC (and
> bigger screen) and to download and save some as local copies. We managed
> to download a handful, but that's also not working now.
>
> How to unstuck the process of syncing? And is File Manager just not up
> to managing >12k files in one folder? Is there a way to optimise it? Are
> there alternative file managers that would be better?

OT in a Mac-group. I never had issues to download my 40'000+ pics.
Do not forget to convert into .jpg.

--
De gustibus non est disputandum

On 6/25/2023 5:45 AM, Chris wrote:
>
> I suspect this is a Windows issue, but adding ucsm in case it's not.
> Apologies if it's OT.
>
> My wife has the 50GB plan for iCloud, but now wants to have a copy of
> all her photos on our home PC. Simple, I thought, install iCloud
> Photos and let it do it's thing.
>
> However, it seems to be stuck at ~12,000 photos sync'd and won't go
> any further. There should be ~19,000. The iCloud taskbar icon says
> there ~4800 downloading.
>
> Also, File Manager is now practically unusable. Only a handful of
> photos have thumbnails and right-clicking on any of them freezes file
> manager which eventually crashes. It's a been like this for about a
> day and rebooted/restarted a few times.
>
> CPU usage is minimal: icloud is using 25% and that's about it. There's
> no network activity.
>
> The overall aim is for her to able to look at photos on the PC (and
> bigger screen) and to download and save some as local copies. We
> managed to download a handful, but that's also not working now.
>
> How to unstuck the process of syncing? And is File Manager just not up
> to managing >12k files in one folder? Is there a way to optimise it?
> Are there alternative file managers that would be better?

I suggest you put your photos in multiple .zip or .7z files. That will
solve your ">12K files in one folder" problem for sure.

You can group your photos by events (like weddings, picnics, tours, etc)

7z format has higher compression ratio than zip format. That means 7z
files will have a smaller file size for the same set of photos.

https://www.7-zip.org/

On 25/06/2023 10:45, Chris wrote:
> I suspect this is a Windows issue, but adding ucsm in case it's not.
> Apologies if it's OT.
>
> My wife has the 50GB plan for iCloud, but now wants to have a copy of
> all her photos on our home PC. Simple, I thought, install iCloud Photos
> and let it do it's thing.
>
> However, it seems to be stuck at ~12,000 photos sync'd and won't go any
> further. There should be ~19,000. The iCloud taskbar icon says there
> ~4800 downloading.
>
> Also, File Manager is now practically unusable. Only a handful of photos
> have thumbnails and right-clicking on any of them freezes file manager
> which eventually crashes. It's a been like this for about a day and
> rebooted/restarted a few times.
>
> CPU usage is minimal: icloud is using 25% and that's about it. There's
> no network activity.
>
> The overall aim is for her to able to look at photos on the PC (and
> bigger screen) and to download and save some as local copies. We managed
> to download a handful, but that's also not working now.
>
> How to unstuck the process of syncing? And is File Manager just not up
> to managing >12k files in one folder? Is there a way to optimise it? Are
> there alternative file managers that would be better?

It seems like you're experiencing issues with iCloud Photos syncing and
file management on your Windows PC. Let's try some troubleshooting steps
to address these problems:

1. Check iCloud Photos settings: Ensure that iCloud Photos is set up
correctly on your wife's iPhone or iPad, and that the device is
connected to a stable Wi-Fi network. Also, verify that the iCloud Photo
Library option is enabled in the iCloud settings.

2. Update iCloud for Windows: Make sure you have the latest version of
iCloud for Windows installed on your PC. You can check for updates by
opening the iCloud for Windows application and navigating to the
"Updates" tab.

3. Restart iCloud for Windows: Sometimes, restarting the iCloud for
Windows service can resolve syncing issues. To do this, right-click on
the iCloud icon in the system tray and select "Close iCloud." Afterward,
launch it again from the Start menu or desktop shortcut.

4. Repair iCloud for Windows: If the above steps didn't resolve the
problem, you can try repairing the iCloud for Windows installation. Open
the Control Panel, navigate to "Programs" or "Programs and Features,"
find iCloud, and choose the "Repair" option.

5. Reset iCloud Photos: As a last resort, you can try resetting iCloud
Photos on your wife's device. To do this, go to "Settings" on her iPhone
or iPad, tap on her name at the top, select "iCloud," then "Photos," and
finally toggle off and on the "iCloud Photos" option.

Regarding File Manager performance, managing a large number of files in
a single folder can sometimes cause slowdowns. You could try organizing
the photos into subfolders based on date, event, or any other suitable
criteria. This can improve the performance of File Manager or any other
file manager you use.

If you're looking for alternative file managers, there are several
options available. Some popular ones include Total Commander,
FreeCommander, and XYplorer. These file managers often provide
additional features and customization options compared to the default
File Manager in Windows.

Try these troubleshooting steps and let me know if they help resolve the
syncing issue and improve File Manager performance.

On 25/06/2023 11:38, David Brooks forgot to mention that his answer was
actually from AI!

Sorry about that!

--
David

Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I suspect this is a Windows issue, but adding ucsm in case it's not.
> Apologies if it's OT.
>
> My wife has the 50GB plan for iCloud, but now wants to have a copy of
> all her photos on our home PC. Simple, I thought, install iCloud Photos
> and let it do it's thing.
>
> However, it seems to be stuck at ~12,000 photos sync'd and won't go any
> further. There should be ~19,000. The iCloud taskbar icon says there
> ~4800 downloading.
>
> Also, File Manager is now practically unusable. Only a handful of photos
> have thumbnails and right-clicking on any of them freezes file manager
> which eventually crashes. It's a been like this for about a day and
> rebooted/restarted a few times.
>
> CPU usage is minimal: icloud is using 25% and that's about it. There's
> no network activity.
>
> The overall aim is for her to able to look at photos on the PC (and
> bigger screen) and to download and save some as local copies. We managed
> to download a handful, but that's also not working now.
>
> How to unstuck the process of syncing? And is File Manager just not up
> to managing >12k files in one folder? Is there a way to optimise it? Are
> there alternative file managers that would be better?

It's probably of little help, but I had a similar problem with the
Google Drive software on my Windows 11 system. In the end, I 'solved' it
by stopping the Google Drive software, End-ing all Google Drive
processes and restarting the Google Drive software.

As to File Explorer (I assume that's what you mean by 'File Manager'),
you could try something else to look at the *files* (not the photos in
them) with something as simple as a Command Prompt window, or/and you
could look at the files/photos with some other program, like whatever
photo viewer is included in Windows 10, or IrfanView, or some such.

And note Joerg's comment: Are the photos perhaps converted on the fly
from whatever 'Apple' format (HEIC?) to another format? Doing that for
~19,000 photos could be quite a load.

Joerg Lorenz <hugybear@gmx.ch> wrote:
> Am 25.06.23 um 11:45 schrieb Chris:
>>
>> I suspect this is a Windows issue, but adding ucsm in case it's not.
>> Apologies if it's OT.
>>
>> My wife has the 50GB plan for iCloud, but now wants to have a copy of
>> all her photos on our home PC. Simple, I thought, install iCloud Photos
>> and let it do it's thing.
>>
>> However, it seems to be stuck at ~12,000 photos sync'd and won't go any
>> further. There should be ~19,000. The iCloud taskbar icon says there
>> ~4800 downloading.
>>
>> Also, File Manager is now practically unusable. Only a handful of photos
>> have thumbnails and right-clicking on any of them freezes file manager
>> which eventually crashes. It's a been like this for about a day and
>> rebooted/restarted a few times.
>>
>> CPU usage is minimal: icloud is using 25% and that's about it. There's
>> no network activity.
>>
>> The overall aim is for her to able to look at photos on the PC (and
>> bigger screen) and to download and save some as local copies. We managed
>> to download a handful, but that's also not working now.
>>
>> How to unstuck the process of syncing? And is File Manager just not up
>> to managing >12k files in one folder? Is there a way to optimise it? Are
>> there alternative file managers that would be better?
>
> OT in a Mac-group. I never had issues to download my 40'000+ pics.

Thanks for giving confidence that it should work.

> Do not forget to convert into .jpg.

Yes, that's the default. Not using HEIC.

Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
> Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I suspect this is a Windows issue, but adding ucsm in case it's not.
>> Apologies if it's OT.
>>
>> My wife has the 50GB plan for iCloud, but now wants to have a copy of
>> all her photos on our home PC. Simple, I thought, install iCloud Photos
>> and let it do it's thing.
>>
>> However, it seems to be stuck at ~12,000 photos sync'd and won't go any
>> further. There should be ~19,000. The iCloud taskbar icon says there
>> ~4800 downloading.
>>
>> Also, File Manager is now practically unusable. Only a handful of photos
>> have thumbnails and right-clicking on any of them freezes file manager
>> which eventually crashes. It's a been like this for about a day and
>> rebooted/restarted a few times.
>>
>> CPU usage is minimal: icloud is using 25% and that's about it. There's
>> no network activity.
>>
>> The overall aim is for her to able to look at photos on the PC (and
>> bigger screen) and to download and save some as local copies. We managed
>> to download a handful, but that's also not working now.
>>
>> How to unstuck the process of syncing? And is File Manager just not up
>> to managing >12k files in one folder? Is there a way to optimise it? Are
>> there alternative file managers that would be better?
>
> It's probably of little help, but I had a similar problem with the
> Google Drive software on my Windows 11 system. In the end, I 'solved' it
> by stopping the Google Drive software, End-ing all Google Drive
> processes and restarting the Google Drive software.

I'll give that a go.

> As to File Explorer (I assume that's what you mean by 'File Manager'),
> you could try something else to look at the *files* (not the photos in
> them) with something as simple as a Command Prompt window, or/and you
> could look at the files/photos with some other program, like whatever
> photo viewer is included in Windows 10, or IrfanView, or some such.

I can't as File Explorer (thanks) freezes whenever I try to interact with
any of the photos. Even a right-click.

Is it possible to open or download the files from command prompt?

> And note Joerg's comment: Are the photos perhaps converted on the fly
> from whatever 'Apple' format (HEIC?) to another format? Doing that for
> ~19,000 photos could be quite a load.

They're all jpegs.

Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote:
> Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
[...]
> > As to File Explorer (I assume that's what you mean by 'File Manager'),
> > you could try something else to look at the *files* (not the photos in
> > them) with something as simple as a Command Prompt window, or/and you
> > could look at the files/photos with some other program, like whatever
> > photo viewer is included in Windows 10, or IrfanView, or some such.
>
> I can't as File Explorer (thanks) freezes whenever I try to interact with
> any of the photos. Even a right-click.
>
> Is it possible to open or download the files from command prompt?

No, I mean open a Command Prompt window, 'cd' to the folder where the
files should be and do a 'dir', to see if there's a general fodler-size
problem or 'just' a File Explorer problem.

Likewise with the photo viewer, IrfanView, etc.. *Don't* right-click
in File Explorer, but start the photo-viewer/IrfanView and (try to) open
the folder/files from within *that* program. So for IrfanView -> File ->
Open...

Windows 11 has both 'Windows Media Player Legacy' (probably without
Legacy in 10) and a 'Photos' *app*.

BTW, I see that the Photos app has a 'iCloud Photos' category:

"View your iCloud Photos here

Install iCloud for Windows from the Microsoft Store. Sign in to
iCloud and choose "Photos" to view your iCloud Photos here.
Learn more about setting up iCloud for Microsoft Photos.

[Get iCloud for Windows]"

[...]

On 25/06/2023 14:44, Frank Slootweg wrote:
> Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
> [...]
>>> As to File Explorer (I assume that's what you mean by 'File Manager'),
>>> you could try something else to look at the *files* (not the photos in
>>> them) with something as simple as a Command Prompt window, or/and you
>>> could look at the files/photos with some other program, like whatever
>>> photo viewer is included in Windows 10, or IrfanView, or some such.
>>
>> I can't as File Explorer (thanks) freezes whenever I try to interact with
>> any of the photos. Even a right-click.
>>
>> Is it possible to open or download the files from command prompt?
>
> No, I mean open a Command Prompt window, 'cd' to the folder where the
> files should be and do a 'dir', to see if there's a general fodler-size
> problem or 'just' a File Explorer problem.
>
> Likewise with the photo viewer, IrfanView, etc.. *Don't* right-click
> in File Explorer, but start the photo-viewer/IrfanView and (try to) open
> the folder/files from within *that* program. So for IrfanView -> File ->
> Open...

Ah, I see. Will give it a go when I'm back in front of it.

> Windows 11 has both 'Windows Media Player Legacy' (probably without
> Legacy in 10) and a 'Photos' *app*.
>
> BTW, I see that the Photos app has a 'iCloud Photos' category:
>
> "View your iCloud Photos here
>
> Install iCloud for Windows from the Microsoft Store. Sign in to
> iCloud and choose "Photos" to view your iCloud Photos here.
> Learn more about setting up iCloud for Microsoft Photos.
>
> [Get iCloud for Windows]"

Will see if that complicates things or not.
Thanks!

Am 25.06.23 um 15:06 schrieb Chris:
> Joerg Lorenz <hugybear@gmx.ch> wrote:
>> OT in a Mac-group. I never had issues to download my 40'000+ pics.
>
> Thanks for giving confidence that it should work.

I'm talking about my Macs

>> Do not forget to convert into .jpg.
>
> Yes, that's the default. Not using HEIC.

You could also download them in batches: Year by year or something like
that.

--
Gutta cavat lapidem (Ovid)

Am 25.06.23 um 14:33 schrieb Frank Slootweg:
> And note Joerg's comment: Are the photos perhaps converted on the fly
> from whatever 'Apple' format (HEIC?) to another format? Doing that for
> ~19,000 photos could be quite a load.

Not a big deal. I always download the pix as .jpeg instead of the .HEIC
they are stored in the iCloud.

--
Gutta cavat lapidem (Ovid)

Am 25.06.23 um 15:06 schrieb Chris:
> Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
>> And note Joerg's comment: Are the photos perhaps converted on the fly
>> from whatever 'Apple' format (HEIC?) to another format? Doing that for
>> ~19,000 photos could be quite a load.
>
> They're all jpegs.

That means you have chosen to store them as .jpegs? That facilittates
the process further. I have chosen this format too a couple of years ago
because most forums do not accept .HEICs for uploads.

--
Gutta cavat lapidem (Ovid)

On 6/25/2023 5:45 AM, Chris wrote:
>
> I suspect this is a Windows issue, but adding ucsm in case it's not. Apologies if it's OT.
>
> My wife has the 50GB plan for iCloud, but now wants to have a copy of all her photos on our home PC. Simple, I thought, install iCloud Photos and let it do it's thing.
>
> However, it seems to be stuck at ~12,000 photos sync'd and won't go any further. There should be ~19,000. The iCloud taskbar icon says there ~4800 downloading.
>
> Also, File Manager is now practically unusable. Only a handful of photos have thumbnails and right-clicking on any of them freezes file manager which eventually crashes. It's a been like this for about a day and rebooted/restarted a few times.
>
> CPU usage is minimal: icloud is using 25% and that's about it. There's no network activity.
>
> The overall aim is for her to able to look at photos on the PC (and bigger screen) and to download and save some as local copies. We managed to download a handful, but that's also not working now.
>
> How to unstuck the process of syncing? And is File Manager just not up to managing >12k files in one folder? Is there a way to optimise it? Are there alternative file managers that would be better?

This is pretty generic advice, but one tidbit is something
about making sure the accounts you are using, are one in the same.

"If your iCloud Photos aren't loading on your PC"

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT205328

*******

To test your Windows PC at handling a large folder of images, you can use
FFMPEG to chop a video into individual frames. BMP frames are
way too big for this, whereas JPG as an output choice, gives
better testing bang for buck. While it did "hwaccel" when I asked it,
the output step (making a JPG) was slow. It's when you make an AVI
with mjpeg encoder, that you get "all cores" performance with FFMPEG.
The file I used for this, was 315,000 images or so.

ffmpeg -hwaccel nvdec -i key01.mp4 -f image2 -q:v 1 -c:v bmp a%06d.bmp # waste of space
ffmpeg -hwaccel nvdec -i key01.mp4 -f image2 -c:v mjpeg a%06d.jpg # lower quality
ffmpeg -hwaccel nvdec -i key01.mp4 -f image2 -q:v 1 -c:v mjpeg a%06d.jpg # higher quality

Yes, File Manager has issues with scaling. It does not really like
folders with too many files. A previous issue, was if you had 50,000 photos,
you deleted 5,000 of them, the busy cursor would appear and basically,
that particular window view would never come back. If you went to another
File Manager window (a "fresh" one), went to that folder and deleted
the rest of the folder, then yes, the broadcasting of the folder being
empty, that allows the "stuck" window to recover. But this is hardly
a good method.

File Manager wants to make thumbnails of the files, no matter what local partition
they are on, and store them in a thumbnail database on the C: drive. It couldn't
just keep the thumbnails in the test folder or anything.

Cleanmgr.exe has an option to "clean thumbnails", and for it to do that,
it takes the thumbnail cache offline, sweeps out the content, then puts
it online again.

*******

If I had an iCloud account, then I could test this. But without that,
it's unlikely I can propose a failure mechanism. I don't know in your
example, whether iCloud is "doing something" to the computer or not.

You can open Task Manager (right-click Start and it should be in the list),
and review how much RAM is being used by various things, how much CPU.

The next level of debug, is Process Monitor. It records ETW events into
RAM. This includes ReadFile, WriteFile, CreateFile. This allows you to
see and log, every file operation at the file system level. It can
"record up to 199 million events", but you'd likely run out of RAM
before bumping into that limit. It's possible it uses on the order
of 1KB per recorded entry. Note that the search speed (when you're
doing forensics in there) has slowed down by 20x-50x since the program
was first written, so like the File Manager, it's no longer a prize pig
either :-/

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

That utility is only useful for certain classes of problems. If a process
has an internal problem with threads or something, Process Explorer run
as admin, can take "snapshots" of the stack (stack frames), but the sampling
method (as is true of a lot of other profiling tools of this nature) tends
to "interact" with the problem, and only the "boring frames" appear in the
trace. This is the classic "sync problem", where various bits of softwares
conspire to never allow you to get completely random sampling of something.

Paul

On 6/25/2023 10:11 AM, Chris wrote:
> On 25/06/2023 14:44, Frank Slootweg wrote:
>> Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
>> [...]
>>>>    As to File Explorer (I assume that's what you mean by 'File Manager'),
>>>> you could try something else to look at the *files* (not the photos in
>>>> them) with something as simple as a Command Prompt window, or/and you
>>>> could look at the files/photos with some other program, like whatever
>>>> photo viewer is included in Windows 10, or IrfanView, or some such.
>>>
>>> I can't as File Explorer (thanks) freezes whenever I try to interact with
>>> any of the photos. Even a right-click.
>>>
>>> Is it possible to open or download the files from command prompt?
>>
>>    No, I mean open a Command Prompt window, 'cd' to the folder where the
>> files should be and do a 'dir', to see if there's a general fodler-size
>> problem or 'just' a File Explorer problem.
>>
>>    Likewise with the photo viewer, IrfanView, etc.. *Don't* right-click
>> in File Explorer, but start the photo-viewer/IrfanView and (try to) open
>> the folder/files from within *that* program. So for IrfanView -> File ->
>> Open...
>
> Ah, I see. Will give it a go when I'm back in front of it.
>
>>    Windows 11 has both 'Windows Media Player Legacy' (probably without
>> Legacy in 10) and a 'Photos' *app*.
>>
>>    BTW, I see that the Photos app has a 'iCloud Photos' category:
>>
>> "View your iCloud Photos here
>>
>>   Install iCloud for Windows from the Microsoft Store. Sign in to
>>   iCloud and choose "Photos" to view your iCloud Photos here.
>>   Learn more about setting up iCloud for Microsoft Photos.
>>
>>   [Get iCloud for Windows]"
>
> Will see if that complicates things or not.
> Thanks!
>

Google has a service calls "Google Takeout", which allows bulk transfer
of things like a GMail account, to your machine. The Takeout has various
tick boxes, for what you want bulk transferred. These could be in a ZIP file,
as output.

So I decided, for fun, to see if Apple offered "Apple Takeout", because
you know, competition is good. [Adjust link locale as you see fit]

"Transfer a copy of your iCloud Photos collection to another service"

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT208514

That's not the convenience of Google Takeout, but you could do a
"two hop" transfer, Apple to Google, Google to earth. I don't
really consider this to be clever as such, but if you've run out
of options, it may be an option of last resort.

Paul

Joerg Lorenz <hugybear@gmx.ch> wrote:
> Am 25.06.23 um 15:06 schrieb Chris:
>> Joerg Lorenz <hugybear@gmx.ch> wrote:
>>> OT in a Mac-group. I never had issues to download my 40'000+ pics.
>>
>> Thanks for giving confidence that it should work.
>
> I'm talking about my Macs

Why are you saying this is OT on Mac group and then giving Mac-specific
feedback...?

>>> Do not forget to convert into .jpg.
>>
>> Yes, that's the default. Not using HEIC.
>
> You could also download them in batches: Year by year or something like
> that.

How?

Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
> On 6/25/2023 10:11 AM, Chris wrote:
>> On 25/06/2023 14:44, Frank Slootweg wrote:
>>> Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
>>> [...]
>>>>>    As to File Explorer (I assume that's what you mean by 'File Manager'),
>>>>> you could try something else to look at the *files* (not the photos in
>>>>> them) with something as simple as a Command Prompt window, or/and you
>>>>> could look at the files/photos with some other program, like whatever
>>>>> photo viewer is included in Windows 10, or IrfanView, or some such.
>>>>
>>>> I can't as File Explorer (thanks) freezes whenever I try to interact with
>>>> any of the photos. Even a right-click.
>>>>
>>>> Is it possible to open or download the files from command prompt?
>>>
>>>    No, I mean open a Command Prompt window, 'cd' to the folder where the
>>> files should be and do a 'dir', to see if there's a general fodler-size
>>> problem or 'just' a File Explorer problem.
>>>
>>>    Likewise with the photo viewer, IrfanView, etc.. *Don't* right-click
>>> in File Explorer, but start the photo-viewer/IrfanView and (try to) open
>>> the folder/files from within *that* program. So for IrfanView -> File ->
>>> Open...
>>
>> Ah, I see. Will give it a go when I'm back in front of it.
>>
>>>    Windows 11 has both 'Windows Media Player Legacy' (probably without
>>> Legacy in 10) and a 'Photos' *app*.
>>>
>>>    BTW, I see that the Photos app has a 'iCloud Photos' category:
>>>
>>> "View your iCloud Photos here
>>>
>>>   Install iCloud for Windows from the Microsoft Store. Sign in to
>>>   iCloud and choose "Photos" to view your iCloud Photos here.
>>>   Learn more about setting up iCloud for Microsoft Photos.
>>>
>>>   [Get iCloud for Windows]"
>>
>> Will see if that complicates things or not.
>> Thanks!
>>
>
> Google has a service calls "Google Takeout", which allows bulk transfer
> of things like a GMail account, to your machine. The Takeout has various
> tick boxes, for what you want bulk transferred. These could be in a ZIP file,
> as output.
>
> So I decided, for fun, to see if Apple offered "Apple Takeout", because
> you know, competition is good. [Adjust link locale as you see fit]
>
> "Transfer a copy of your iCloud Photos collection to another service"
>
> https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT208514
>
> That's not the convenience of Google Takeout, but you could do a
> "two hop" transfer, Apple to Google, Google to earth. I don't
> really consider this to be clever as such, but if you've run out
> of options, it may be an option of last resort.

Thanks Paul. Useful to know.

On 25/6/2023 5:45 pm, Chris wrote:
>
> My wife has the 50GB plan for iCloud, but now wants to have a copy of
> all her photos on our home PC. Simple, I thought, install iCloud Photos
> and let it do it's thing.
>
> However, it seems to be stuck at ~12,000 photos sync'd and won't go any
> further. There should be ~19,000. The iCloud taskbar icon says there
> ~4800 downloading.

Maybe that 19000-12000=7000 photos were so old that they had vanished
during a recent hardware upgrade in the Cloud's data centers.... :)

On 6/26/2023 12:38 AM, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
> On 25/6/2023 5:45 pm, Chris wrote:
>>
>> My wife has the 50GB plan for iCloud, but now wants to have a copy of
>> all her photos on our home PC. Simple, I thought, install iCloud Photos
>> and let it do it's thing.
>>
>> However, it seems to be stuck at ~12,000 photos sync'd and won't go any
>> further. There should be ~19,000. The iCloud taskbar icon says there
>> ~4800 downloading.
>
> Maybe that 19000-12000=7000 photos were so old that they had vanished during a recent hardware upgrade in the Cloud's data centers.... :)

Yes, they only have one hard drive, and it fell on the floor, and
7000 photos fell out. Of course.

Syncing software is very mysterious by the way (I know you like
stuff like this). This is not the first time I've heard of sync
software stopping for a long period of time, and not doing anything.

Even Windows Update does annoying stuff like that. They will actually
delay finishing an update, based on some arbitrary policy in the code.
I'd like to smack somebody when they do shit like that (because
I'm trying to get all the bloody updates done, so they'll leave me alone).

I think on one occasion, when Windows Update had stopped responding,
I unplugged the network cable, then plugged it back in. And seconds
later, the updates installed themselves. It wasn't a networking
issue, because I'd been waiting for quite a while, before trying
the network cable as a "stimulus" to get it moving again.

Some softwares, they have "deadlock issues". I think they may call
this a "live-lock" in some cases. And if you do enough experiments,
you can figure out what to do, to get it running again.

Pulling out the network cable, isn't always the right answer, which
is why I'm not advocating that in this case. I don't know
why it's stuck -- there could be a million different reasons.

But if you use these softwares often enough, you can compare
the "normal" runs to the abnormal ones, and spot important details.

Paul

Am 26.06.23 um 06:38 schrieb Mr. Man-wai Chang:
> On 25/6/2023 5:45 pm, Chris wrote:
>>
>> My wife has the 50GB plan for iCloud, but now wants to have a copy of
>> all her photos on our home PC. Simple, I thought, install iCloud Photos
>> and let it do it's thing.
>>
>> However, it seems to be stuck at ~12,000 photos sync'd and won't go any
>> further. There should be ~19,000. The iCloud taskbar icon says there
>> ~4800 downloading.
>
> Maybe that 19000-12000=7000 photos were so old that they had vanished
> during a recent hardware upgrade in the Cloud's data centers.... :)

Troll and no clue of anything.

What can we expect from trollish Windows-user?

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0)

--
De gustibus non est disputandum

On 26/6/2023 4:01 pm, Joerg Lorenz wrote:
> Am 26.06.23 um 06:38 schrieb Mr. Man-wai Chang:
>>
>> Maybe that 19000-12000=7000 photos were so old that they had vanished
>> during a recent hardware upgrade in the Cloud's data centers.... :)
>
> Troll and no clue of anything.
>
> What can we expect from trollish Windows-user?

Firefox is a good browser. I wish that "19000" count was accurate ....

Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 25/06/2023 14:44, Frank Slootweg wrote:
>> Chris <ithinkiam@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
>> [...]
>>>> As to File Explorer (I assume that's what you mean by 'File Manager'),
>>>> you could try something else to look at the *files* (not the photos in
>>>> them) with something as simple as a Command Prompt window, or/and you
>>>> could look at the files/photos with some other program, like whatever
>>>> photo viewer is included in Windows 10, or IrfanView, or some such.
>>>
>>> I can't as File Explorer (thanks) freezes whenever I try to interact with
>>> any of the photos. Even a right-click.
>>>
>>> Is it possible to open or download the files from command prompt?
>>
>> No, I mean open a Command Prompt window, 'cd' to the folder where the
>> files should be and do a 'dir', to see if there's a general fodler-size
>> problem or 'just' a File Explorer problem.
>>
>> Likewise with the photo viewer, IrfanView, etc.. *Don't* right-click
>> in File Explorer, but start the photo-viewer/IrfanView and (try to) open
>> the folder/files from within *that* program. So for IrfanView -> File ->
>> Open...
>
> Ah, I see. Will give it a go when I'm back in front of it.

OK. I've had time to investigate this further.

I tried opening the photos in IrfanView which brought up a pop-up about
downloads and warnings that it could cause problems. Accepted the default
and then it hung.

Tried Firefox worked with a pre-downloaded file, but also hung when
attempting to download a cached file.

A "dir" in CMD listed >12,000 files most/all with file sizes in "()"
presumably because they're cache thumbnails.

>> Windows 11 has both 'Windows Media Player Legacy' (probably without
>> Legacy in 10) and a 'Photos' *app*.
>>
>> BTW, I see that the Photos app has a 'iCloud Photos' category:
>>
>> "View your iCloud Photos here
>>
>> Install iCloud for Windows from the Microsoft Store. Sign in to
>> iCloud and choose "Photos" to view your iCloud Photos here.
>> Learn more about setting up iCloud for Microsoft Photos.
>>
>> [Get iCloud for Windows]"
>
> Will see if that complicates things or not.
> Thanks!

Tried that and it could preview some recent photos, tried to open, which
then seemed more promising as it managed download the file (after a while),
but then wouldn't load due to be unreadable/corrupt.

So fuck it! Something is massively screwed up.

I deleted everything, clean reboot and started again. Will leave it a few
hours to a day and see what happens.

Joerg Lorenz <hugybear@gmx.ch> wrote:
> Am 25.06.23 um 15:06 schrieb Chris:
>> Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> wrote:
>>> And note Joerg's comment: Are the photos perhaps converted on the fly
>>> from whatever 'Apple' format (HEIC?) to another format? Doing that for
>>> ~19,000 photos could be quite a load.
>>
>> They're all jpegs.
>
> That means you have chosen to store them as .jpegs?

It means that the option to download files as HEIC is unchecked.