So lately i have been having the "avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00" problem as many others have.
But, i managed to fix it in an odd way.
I am using the Uno r2 and that was the board i had selected in the IDE.
I also had the error with this board selected.
So being curious, i changed the board setting to "Arduino Duemilanove w/ATmega328".
Interestingly enough, the error went away after that. I also loaded the example program and it worked fine. So basically what i'm asking, is why did this work? And is this harmful/wrong to the Uno?
The UNO and Duemilanove bootloaders use different baud rates. Sounds like the chip on your UNO has a Duemilanove bootloader installed. If you have an ISP device or a second Arduino on which you can run ArduinoISP you can burn a fresh UNO bootloader on it.
nice try 