WiFi After ESP Now

[GR56756467]

I have a simple WiFi sketch that scans and displays networks and then connects to one of them.

I have an esp32-s3 dev board (no name clone) that I have been using as an ESP NOW receiver for another project. The WiFi sketch no longer connects to the WiFI when I re-flash the WiFi sketch (it worked fine before I started my ESP NOW project). The scan is fine, but it never connects to the hard-coded SSID/pwd.

I have another (Espressif) S3 dev board that I have been using as an ESP NOW sender and the WiFi sketch works fine.

I googled the problem and the only suggestion I found was from Google AI saying that "Erase all flash before sketch upload" might solve the problem. It didn't.

I have also tried forcing the device into bootloader (boot/rst/unrst/unboot), and adding esp_now_deInit() but still no joy.

Any suggestions as to what to try next?

TIA