I tried again with a 2.2uf. Sadly, no improvement. It continues to act the same on both available test systems. I am using a 20mhz ceramic resonator, is it possible this is a problem?

the 20mhx resonator has worked fine for other projects and it also runs the blinky led test on the 18f4550...

thanks! i really am not a lazy question asking *******... ive probably spent 20 hours on this in the last 4 days...

-robert

(p.s. i am trying to usb-ize some of my future projects, wanna see past stuff? the electronics are buried in the list. www.robertguyser.com)