ESP8266-01 - What settings do I need to use to send sketches to it?( revisited)

Back in early 2017 this topic came up and the OP seemed to have found his problem. Currently I am having the same problem almost exactly as the OP. I have a few of these devices that have been working fine but when I tried to update the code I get message that says to the effect that the board is not connected. I ran a loopback check right at the pins of the esp8266-01 with correct results. When I watch the upload process, I can see the TX led flashing on the ftd adaptor as well as the activity led on the esp. But I never see the rx led respond. And then I get the message that I have attached.
My IDE is 1.8.12 (windows 1.8.33)
ESP boards manager is 2.6.3

The error message seems to point to several Python files. I have both 2.7 and 3.8 installed and I have looked at those lines called out in the message but I don't have enough knowledge to see any error if it hit me in the face. I have been busy working on a esp32 project and the IDE worked fine there. After getting things going there, I came back to the 8266-01 project and am dead in the water. What am I missing? I am sure it is something simple. The one setting I am not sure about is the FLASH SIZE as all the choices have a setting for OTA values.
Any ideas
KentM

error.txt (849 Bytes)

is the esp-01 in flashing mode?

The only way that I know to do that is to ground GPIO-0 when trying to flash. That is what has worked for me before. Is there something else I should be doing?

merkelck:
The only way that I know to do that is to ground GPIO-0 when trying to flash. That is what has worked for me before. Is there something else I should be doing?

yes, but it applies only at power-up or reset

I got it working by doing a uninstall and reinstall of both of my versions of python. I have no idea what happened to that but it is working again. I did not know what else to do other than look there due to the error message that I received.