Well, since johntech2011 is on windows xp, I tried things out on that os (I used win xp pro sp2). Guess what, it did not work. The work around so use -c arduino (
http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,108270.msg1013258.html#msg1) does not help either.
More in general communication over the leo's virtual com port does not work at all: error writing to serial port (tried putty, ide's serial monitor and avrdude) This is strange since uploadng sketches to the leo's bootloader does work correctly. So this must be caused by the leo's core which works very well with linux but really has some problems with windows.
I want to figure this out but it does not look very good. All ideas are welcome.