LPT locked?

Hey,

So, I’m trying to program my atmega168 and I have it all hooked up the way it is in the beginner tutorial II on sparkfun. I am trying to use PonyProg to burn my code to the 168 and it keeps saying “Hardware error; is the interface connected properly?”. I got a similar about not being able to open the i/o port when I earlier tried to burn the arduino bootloader to it, and when I probe the port (LPT1) it fails. I have read the WinXP (what I am using) blocks access to the parallel port except for kernel level programs. Is there a way to get around this or to unlock the LPT ports in WinXP? How was it done in the tutorial, with an earlier version of windows or with a mac? Thanks.

Hev you run the “giveio.bat” file?

I have.