Larry, I just noticed an oddity and showed Manu and now it's clear how to reproduce the problem.

First, it's best to start with a clean profile with no normal/editor mode layouts. Okay, now there is no layouts, do the following:

1. Open a project in ES.
2. Switch to debug mode.
3. Save a layout, named 'debug_mode'
4. Exit ES, still in debug mode.

5. Reopen ES and the project, and it should be in debug mode.
6. The open menu is now disabled.

The cause is because you do not update the menu based on the set mode, and you also do not update the menu when the mode is switched. When ES is started in debug mode, the menu is disabled because it is generating a menu for the normal mode, which there are none.