[avr-gcc-list] AVRDude serial access problem under WinXP

[Vrudny, Noah O]

Hello all,

I was handed a school project for programming a couple of ATMega128 
micro-controllers and as such I downloaded and installed the WinAVR suite for 
accomplishing the task. The controllers are part of a dev board kit that 
include a standard 9-pin serial plug for interfaceing / programing with a PC.

After building a project and a makefile and running the "program" script 
AVRDude punts and returns an error "ser_open():failed Access Denied" (or 
something to that effect)

I am doing all of this on my home PC where I have complete adminstrative access 
to all windows has to offer, so I don't fully understand why access is denied.

I have searched far and wide on the web with no avail. Here is a list of the 
small iterations that I have tried to eliminate variables.

1: Made sure no other application was using the com port, or running for that 
matter. (no luck, same error)
2: Tried using -P/dev/com2 for the AVRDude switch instead of just -P com2 (the 
error this time is "device not found")
3: Tried using all iterations of case sensitivity for the port switch (error is 
either device not found or access denied)
4: After typing "ls -l com2" the result shows that I have RW access to com2

Also I am using a USB to serial converter as my pc has no serial port on its 
own, if that makes any difference. And, other applications, for example MATLAB, 
have no problem reading and writing to the serial port.

This is kind of a long winded explaination/question, so I appologize. But, this 
error is highly annoying and I would appreciate some help and insight.

Thanks,
--Noah