Thanx to those that posted previously. Im a newbie. I just set everything up for the first time and ran the example program "Blink".
Led flashed for 1/2 sec on about 3 secs off. Also got these error messages
avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x51
tried suggestions in the previous posts and found that I had the wrong com port selected.
Sorted that out, shut down 0017 and restarted it, uploaded to the chip and it now works as it should. Im using Windows XP, Haceduino Atmega168-20PU.