FTDI Programming Issues

Hi there,

Here's the background:

I am currently in school and have an Arduino based Calculator that was designed and built in house (not by myself). It has an Atmega328p and the board type we use to programme is Pro or Pro Mini 3.3v 8MHz with Atmega328p.
With the school computers (Win7 32bit) we had a problems downloading code to it, 'avrdude error not in sync' (or similar) came up every time. The fix we found was destroy all ftdi drivers (2.8.30) and replace them with 2.8.24, and everything worked.

Now, I'm at home with my Win8 64bit laptop using Arduino 1.0.3 and I have the same error. Having changed the drivers multiple times to all kinds of versions I have failed to get it to work.
Verbose returns:

         Using Port                    : \\.\COM12
         Using Programmer              : arduino
         Overriding Baud Rate          : 57600
avrdude: Send: 0 [30]   [20] 
avrdude: Send: 0 [30]   [20] 
avrdude: Send: 0 [30]   [20] 
avrdude: Recv: 
avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00

avrdude done.  Thank you.

Tests I've done:

Wire between TX and RX on the FTDI cable: Serial monitor displays everything I send out
Wire between TX and RX on the DIP socket: Serial monitor displays everything I send out
Change COM ports to 1,3,9,10,4: No change
Try Arduino 0022: No change
Try another PC (Win7 32bit) (Not school) No change
Add FTDI to boards.txt No change
Try other board types No change

Something else I tried was to wire up the chip to my mega and try the download via that board. But that did nothing as well.

The chip is running the current code without problem, the COM port is correct, baud rate is correct and I can still programme my Mega fine.

I have tried everything I can think of without anything helping. What is going on? There's probably something simple that has slipped my mind.

Since it is custom hardware is it possible that the designer left out the Auto Reset feature? Try holding down the Reset button until you see the RX light blink on upload.

Try holding down the Reset button until you see the RX light blink on upload.

There is no reset button or TX/RX LEDS, however the auto-reset upon download does work correctly