Bob,
Thank you for your gracious response. You described the firmware number accurately. However, I was unable to do any of the manual switches. I attempted the connection but my computer would not recognize it as removable storage or player or anything. I uninstalled and reinstalled the updater three times, tried to connect, but without success. Because I thought it was toast, I decided to format to see if anything would help.The music did disappear for sure after that, and I knew it was reloadable IF we could get it to update.
Now the news: between last night when I wrote the request and this morning, something happened that I cannot explain.
I turned on the computer this morning, reconnected the Sansa e280, ate breakfast, and came back to take the Sansa off only to see the Sansa Updater in the icon tray. I ran the updater, and the new firmware is on the player. USB mode now appears in the Settings menu. Whatever happened internally is a mystery to me that it would suddenly update.
I wanted to let you know since you had taken time to suggest a solution.
I’m concerned, however, that I may have a player that is beginning to fail since it chose to enter the mode without any outside assistance. Now, I know it has no life of its own, but it was working one day and not the next.
Again, my thanks.
Kurt 
