Thank you both for your ideas and suggestions and in MPLAB IDE 8.84 there is an option under Programmer to "Down load PICKSTART OS" which is supposted to ensure the correct programmer firmware. For some unknown reason I can not figure out or resolve the MPLAB gives an error message: "PICSTART Plus not found. Please verify serial connection and try the current operation again. A serial time out has occurred. Please verify your serial connection and try again." I am running Windows XP Pro SP3, removed and reinstalled the RS-232 com port, changed the configuration of the port several time and checked all that I know to check without any success. I am certain whatever I am doing wrong is very basic and simple, just can not figure out what it is!