Well, I think at this point I have tried everything except brand new out of the tube microcontrollers. There is one factor in play here I didnt think of until just recent: Im using a very old laptop, and windows 98SE. I really dont think this is the problem but I have never had this kind of issue before so maybe it is. It appears to me as if the pic is being flashed correctly because I can flash test data into the EEPROM memory, and it will be read back correctly. It may be time to just break down and buy a better programming solution. For now Im sort of giving up.