Issue with getting started with Arduino mega

Question

I've just got my first brand new Arduino mega 2560 board. I've downloaded Arduino 1.0.1 software.

When I first plugged in the board, it failed to detect the device. So I opened device manager and pointed to the "...\arduino-1.0.1\drivers" folder to update the driver for the unidentified Arduino Mega 2560 device.

Now comes my first problem; (O/S is window 7 32bit)

Following warning came. 

I chose to install anyway. Is that wrong??

However driver is successfully installed.

Then I opened Arduino 1.0.1 software (what should i call it, IDE?) and opened the blink example. And tried to upload it to the board. I didn't change any settings. Kept the default settings, which are;

Board       = Arduino Mega 2560 or Mega ADK  
Serial Port = COM3

Upload failed giving following error,

Binary sketch size: 1,632 bytes (of a 258,048 byte maximum)
avrdude: stk500v2_command(): unknown status 0xc8
avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1
         Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override
         this check.

avrdude: stk500v2_command(): unknown status 0x01
avrdude: stk500v2_disable(): failed to leave programming mode

How can I get over with this? I don't have any prior experience on Arduino. Can't figure out what to do now.

It would be greatly appreciated if someone can help me to overcome this issue. If the details I provided are not enough, please ask. Hope someone will come to help soon..

Thank you!

Answer 1

The same problem with possible solution is described here:

http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?action=print;num=1287724404