STK500 development kit complication

[momin]

hey everybody,
i got an Atmel avr STK500 development kit, it was working great but now i got a problem. whenever i turn the power switch on the power led turns red but both the stauts led and Vtarget led are off. all the jumpers are set in the defult position as mentioned in the user manual. when i turn the kit on the multimeter reads a short circuit between GND and VTG. this short is not present when the kit is off so it is not a hardware short.
please help me

 

[Sceadwian]

Did you recently try to re-flash the STK500? It may have been part of a recent software upgrade. Somewhere on your machine should be the actual STK500.hex file (or you can download it from Atmel) to re-flash, instructions for upgrading the flash are in the STK500 help.

 

[momin]

the issue is that i cant get the kit to communicate with AVR studio, thus i cant do any programming or reflashing.

 

[Sceadwian]

You haven't read the STK500 documentation then. There's a program button on the board that if you follow the instructions puts the board into a programming mode, which causes it to show up as a different type of programmer (not an STK500) which is what you use to flash the STK500 itself. This program button is ONLY used to put the STK500 into that specific programming mode, it's not for 'normal' programming.