I have connected my pickit 2 to my microcontroller as in the picture but every time I try reading or just make a connection, I get either no device detected or some parts are not auto detect. I had a 18f4550 and it worked fine, but all I could get this time was 18f452. Any ideas?

 

I think you have connect the two VDD pins to the PICKIT 2, and the same will also apply to the VSS pins

 

I Have tried that but still nothing..

 

Just to be sure, you know the the PICKIT pin order from left to right is 6,5,4,3,2,1 . The white marker point to pin 1. Is your PIC in a circuit? Or are you programming your PIC outside the circuit

 

Try pulling pin 38, LVP, low.

And as t06afre asked it would be helpful to know if you're attempting this in-circuit or not. Other parts may be interfering with proper operation.

 

Which tool do you use for programming? A thing to check is that your chip has power. The Pickit may support the chip with power during programming but this option has to turned on then

 

Not sure what exactly happened but its working now. Perhaps one of the suggestions worked as I took the connections apart and tried again with the above solutions. Thanks for the help.

 

Hello,

Perhaps this page helps:
http://www.sprut.de/electronic/pic/icsp/icsp.htm#dil40

Bertus