General :: Deleting Photos / SD Card / Syncing?

I'm only slightly knowledgeable in smartphone maintenance and technology, I know how to do fairly general maintenance tasks on my S4 but have difficulty when an issue comes up. Older phones used to be easy for me to handle. As phone technology advances, I find it harder and harder to keep up.

Anyway, Since the 4.3 update rolled out for Sprint customers, I've been having issues with deleted photos reappearing. Specifically, the ones stored on the SD card in folders that have a little sd card icon next to the folder icon (photos on the device delete just fine). I've searched for the issue but most of the things I read are related to a new card being installed or Picasa syncing the deleted photos. I don't have a new SD card, I've never had a Picasa account or had it on my phone, I've disabled syncing in Google, Google+, Facebook, Gmail, I've deleted Dropbox, turned off every sync option available in settings and the gallery settings, gone to apps > all > gallery and cleared data, gone to My files and tried deleting them there, installed a photo gallery app and tried deleting photos through it. None of these have worked.

I then thought I'd hook up the phone to my computer (running Windows 7) and try to delete them that way but the computer will not display any of the photos stored on the card. Only what's on the device. So irritated with this! Why can't I directly manage photos on my device through the gallery like the days of yore? WHERE is the syncing coming from??? Where did the SD card folder even come from? I didn't create it. And why the limited access to files when connected to my computer via USB? Gotta figure this out somehow. Photos and videos have somehow taken up 7GB of memory.

I don't want everything syncing and linking to everything else!! I like to keep things separate and manage each app/program/utility independently. The occasional access via, say, Facebook or something, is okay now and then but complete, automatic connectivity isn't something all of us want.