Arduino Uno Rev3 Not working

Using Arduino IDE 1.x
1

Hello everyone,

A little history about me before I go into the issues that I am having, I use other micro-controllers on a regular basis and decided to experiment with other micro-controllers, so today I picked up a Arduino Uno Rev3 from Radio Shack.

When I got home I followed the instructions and done some research and installed the drivers for it and set everything up as per documentation. On Windows(7 x64) when I try to upload a sketch I get "avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00" and on Linux I get "avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding"

When I verbose upload I get "avrdude: usbdev_open(): did not find any USB device "usb""

I have done the serial loop back test and it also fails, neither RX or TX lights up.

I am also unable to get it into DFU mode, it still recognized it as a Uno device.

I have done some research and done all the recommendations that I can perform. I however do not have an ISP that I can reprogram the chips with. I guess I could write my code to turn the other micro-controllers into a isp but at this point I do not want to do that.

My question is are there any chances that the boards can have corrupt firmware at time of purchase? I have read a few places that recommend that they can but the posts are a few years old.

At this point I am planning on exchanging it and would like to make sure that the board could be bad at the time of purchase and nothing to do with how I am performing anything.

I have also performed these actions on 4 different machines.

2

The Arduino Uno contains two microcontrollers.
The main ATmega328P and also a ATmega16U2 for usb-to-serial communication.
Both microcontrollers can be programmed with the 6-pin header. I hope you didn't try that.

It should be recognized by the computer. The driver is in the file that contains the Arduino software.
Do you use the newest 1.0.3 ?

The Arduino has be set properly: board, programmer (if you have one) and serial port.
You can use a programmer or the usb-serial connection to upload a sketch. But if you don't have a programmer, you can't upload using a programmer.
Try using the buttons to control the sketch and upload it.

But only after the device driver is valid. If that is not working, the Arduino Board could be defect.