Which is the best ISP for arduino (loading a boot loader to a 328p on breadboard

Development Tools IDE 1.x
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Which is the best ISP for arduino (loading a boot loader to a 328p on breadboard)

Just when I thought I knew what I was doing, come across this frustration.

I would like to install a bootloader onto a atmel328p on a breadboard. I have tried using the spark fun pocket programmer, but getting the drivers to work seems to be close to impossible. I finally got them to load without errors, and the device thinks it's working, but could not see the serial port on the arduino.

I've tried the AVR MKIII - but can not find any drivers that seem to work the the arduino software. They seems to work fine with the AVR studio 5, but have not mastered that software yet, and would like to just do some simple things.

I've trid the FTDI cable which works find for loading the programs/sketches, but can not be used to load the bootloader.

I have not yet tried the arduino as an ISP but ran out of time - or maybe that was patients.

I am trying to make an ardunio compatible device that will work at 3.3 volts (8 mhz clock), but having quite a time of it.

Using windows 7 32 bit.
Driver signing is turned off
I have an adruino uno and a nanode
Using the Adruino software version 1.0
several failed attempts at a breadboad arduion. (boot loader issues)

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I use an USBTinyISP. Apart from having to assemble it myself, it works fine. I use Windows 7 x64, and turned off driver signing only for this device.
I've burned a new bootloader both onto a chip which was installed on an Uno board (using the 6-pin header on that board) and onto a chip that's soldered onto a verboard with the appropriate header break-out.
If you use pins 11/12/13 for low-impedance outputs, or tie reset high using a very small resistor, perhaps the ISP would not be powerful enough to actually program the chip?