Hello @kw_martin, thanks for your informative posts. I think there's a basic misunderstanding here: what you are reporting as entries in the Tools menu do not match with the Arduino Nano ESP32 board you are using.
Please make sure you are using the Arduino ESP32 Boards by Arduino package - in it you should find only the "Arduino Nano ESP32" board. If you have a long list of ESP32 boards among which to choose, you are using the "esp32" package by "Espressif Systems".
Once you have correctly selected this board, please follow this guide to restore full functionality on your Nano ESP32 (loading code for other boards will interfere with recovery and other stuff on the Flash).
Let us know if this helps!