Hey guys. I got a problem with Arduino ISP. I was going to use my Uno for programming microcontrollers using WinAVR(not Arduino IDE). I assembled the circuit as tutorial suggested, uploaded the firmware(IDE's version is 1.0.5) aaand it's not working. I can say that by seeing that heartbeat LED does not blink, and when I try to program my MCU using avrdude, it says "not in sync". I checked everything in the circuit and it seems to me that it is ok. Any suggestions?
Okay, fixed "not in sync" issue(it was avrdude incorrectly configured), now it says "timeout" and it's clearly my Uno not working as intended. Tried to google various tutorials and they do not work. Can anyone help?
Used some other sketches to check if my board is ok - it's ok. Something must be wrong with a sketch.
You haven't really given us enough details to debug your problem...
Which tutorial are you using?
What chip are you trying to program?
What is the avrdude command that you are using (exactly)? Are you using the WINAVR version of avrdude or the arduino installed avrdude? (which version?)
"Timeout" occurs how far into the transfer? What sort of debug info do you get from avrdude when you give it -v -v -v -v on its command line?
westfw:
You haven't really given us enough details to debug your problem...
I mentioned don't see heartbeat blinking, I think we should start with this.
Which tutorial are you using?
Official tutorial, for example. I seen some others, but they were similar to the one over here: http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoISP
What chip are you trying to program?
ATTiny2313, though problem would be present with any chip.
What is the avrdude command that you are using (exactly)? Are you using the WINAVR version of avrdude or the arduino installed avrdude? (which version?)
As I have mentioned, I'm using WinAVR, not Arduino IDE. Here's what avrdude says when I tell him to program:
avrdude -p attiny2313 -P com2 -c stk500 -b 19200 -U flash:w:main.hex
avrdude: stk500_2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
(keeps saying timeout until I terminate it)
It must be some problem with the board, though I did everything right. The board itself is ok, but sketch does not work.
Haha, it's actually Arduino not working properly. Gonna try asking somewhere else.
deaddoe:
Gonna try asking somewhere else.
That begins to sound like an excellent idea. 
avrdude -p attiny2313 -P com2 -c stk500 -b 19200 -U flash:w:main.hex
avrdude: stk500_2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
that 2 in the error message is a strong indicator that you're running the stk500v2 protocol rather than the stk500v1 protocol that is implemented by most of the arduino bootloaders. That's one of the reasons that "-c arduino" was added. If you MUST use the avrdude that came with winavr (instead of, say, copying the avrdude that came with arduino over to your winavr bin directory), try specifying "-c stk500v1"
Did you tried getting 10 µFarad capacitor between GND and RESET?