Here are my replies to the three responders:
1.The serial port via usb works since I can program the leonardo. I just can't make it see the serial port when I use the monitor.
2. It's been driving me nuts for a couple of weeks. I hit it when I was building the 4 wheel robot I got from Makershed. I though it was a bad board and replaed it with an Uno which works fine. It's just leonardos (I have tried more than one). I'm going to try it on another win7 machine and see if it is my netbook that's the problem.
3. I'm not sure what you mean by blink. When the monitor starts, the yellow led blinks as it reestablished the comm port, then the RX light blinks once or twice, then nothing. It is hanging at the while(!Serial). It never gets confirmation that Serial is true. (when I take that out the sketch runs but still no serial monitor).
Any other ideas????