AVR-Chat

hi guys,i am a newbie to world of avr microcontrollers .
welll i have with me an atmega16l microcontroller which i want to
program.i downloaded the schematics of the parallel port programmer
from the ponyprog website.i did all the wiring as per the diagram.
when i tried to burn a small led test program using ponyprog as well
as winavr it did'nt recognise the hardware or the atmega16l.

i am using windows xp .also i tried to correct the problem by 
downloading  some drivers such as giveio.sys and installed them but
still nothing happens.

please advice on what maybe the problem.i checked allthe
connections.if possible suggest me a way of finding out whether the
signals from the parallel port is reaching the microcontroller or not
using leds or some other indicator.

also i downloaded the serial programmer schematic from the files
section and tried that too but ponyprog simply kept refusing to
recognise my microcontroller.

guys please solve my problem or suggest me a working circuit and 
please someone send me a detailed schematic of a working parallel and
or serial  programmer along with the connections to the microcontroller.


thanks for your help.