Programmer doesn't recognize chip.

Hi. I am trying to use the melabs serial programmer to program a PIC18F2431, but when I try to verify device ID, it says "Target device ID is FFFF. This does not match selected device." I have the PIC oriented correctly and I can't figure out what's wrong. Any ideas?

It do the same thing on some other device here too, i usually disable this feature. I can't say how to do it with the MEalbs but it should be doable.