AVR-Chat

On advice from the list this week I purchased a butterfly carrier to 
go along with my AVRRISP MKII (USB programmer.  I also purchased an 
ICE Cube.

The carrier board kit went together well. I compiled the original 
butterfly code (ported to winavr) and loaded it fine with the ICE 
Cube.  I also loaded an application I wrote. I then later restored 
the Butterfly code -- complete with bootloader. So far so good.

I tried the above steps again but with the AVRRISP MKII (usb) 
connected to the ISP connector on the carrier -- but I was not able 
to get the butterfly to program. The AVRRISP connects OK and when I 
say program the status light turns from green (connected) to orange 
(programming) and the USB activity light will flash now and then -- 
but programming never seems to complete.

However, I can use the AVTRISP MKII to read and program fuse bits 
just fine so at some level it appears to be working.

I searched the list archives but found no usefull RISP info.

Can anyone verify that the AVRRISP MKII (USB) -- the one Digikey 
sells for around $30-- should program a Butterfly via the carrier ISP 
connector?  And if so any advice on what might be wrong?

Switching topics -- I find that AVRStudio 4 seems to crash alot.  I 
am running a clean machine with XP. The machine has a 2.8GHz 
processor with 2GB RAM. All OS updates are current. AVR Studio and 
WinAVR are all current versions.  Are crashes just the nature of this 
beast?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

-Mike