thanks again for the reply. yes, i have the osc set for 16 mhz. there's my problem!

about picmulticalc, it starts ok in windows 7 but when you click on any of the buttons (timer calc, timer helper, usart calc) i get a runtime error 713; missing msstdfmt.dll that needs to be installed. rather than troll the web searching for a "trojaned" file, i chose a different calc.

thanks