Well.. when I said it doesn't work unless you press the wire with your hand or press the crystal, I meant that the PIC doesn't receive the clock signal unless that is done. When I do, the program runs nicely and the LEDs flash like they are supposed to. But when I let go, the crystal is disconnected for some reason and the program stops at the instruction it was executing (as if you removed the crystal in the middle of the operation), and so the LEDs remain latched at whatever value they reached at that point. When I touch the crsytal again, the program goes on again and so on! It's really weird and frustrating :cry:
And I don't think I can use solder boards at the moment because I need to test several circuits before I attempt to weld one of them permanently. So bread boards are all I can use for now.