Thanks alot. I popped a 4MHz clock (in place of 12 MHz) and compiled successfully. However, with the same result: the program compiles and the chip is programmed fine. I plug the USB cable into the test PC (and others) and windows will prompt as an unrecognized device. I go into the driver configuration and when I load the .inf file, windows again prompts that there is no hardware information available.

Have gone through the data sheet and fuses very close ... but the same result, which has me wondering about the cdc drivers that I am using for the PC....