I deleted every reference to anything android from my laptop.
I reinstalled everything as in
https://www.b4x.com/b4a.html at least three times, deleting the files installed between each new installation.
I finally used the old version of the sdk, installed the new version over top of it not copying the five text file duplicates.
Now the IDE works, my programs compile, and run on my test devices.
I must be in the 1% of the developers that it doesn't work for.