First, thanks Scaler for the reference; I had included the 2 defines.

Now, to sum up my observations; Henrik, these might be of use to you.

1) A 10uF cap across the Vdd, Vss seems mandatory, regardless of whether you're powering up from the USB, or a separate supply.

2) The Microchip HID bootloader works all right, although it gives a program/verify error. Once you program your code thru' the bootloader, you need to *re-start* the pic; a reset doesnt help. At this point, when the pic comes up again, your code will start executing happily.

3) To get back into the booltoad mode, momentarily ground RA6. You're now ready to load another file thru' the bootloader.

Not perfect, of course, I'd still like to not have the bootloader report the error, but seems to work otherwise.

At times I feel like just giving in favour of a serial bootloader but the concept of a USB bootloader is too tempting to go away

If anybody does any further work on this, or wishes to add more, I'd really appreciate it.

Regards,

Anand