A valid ESP32 sketch would uplaod without error about the beginning of the year - Now giving error codes

OK, great. The error message in that output is different from what you provided in post #1

xtensa-esp-elf-g++.exe: fatal error: cannot execute 'C:/Users/iwils/AppData/Local/Arduino15/packages/esp32/tools/esp-x32/2411/bin/../libexec/gcc/xtensa-esp-elf/14.2.0/cc1plus.exe': CreateProcess: No such file or directory

The cc1plus.exe file should indeed be located at the specified path. It may be missing due to your antivirus/security software having quarantined it. If so, if you can recover it from the quarantine and configure the antivirus so that it won't quarantine it once again, then that should fix the problem.