Hi, I am new to PIC and just purchased this kit. I am having one heck of a time with it. I have installed MPLAB X IDE. All the documentaion and user guides I see are for MPLAB 8. I guess Microchip does not use that anymore. I got lesson 1 to finally work once. Then tried to go on to lesson 2. And the user guide asks me to open a lesson file that I cannot find. Is there a user guide out there that I can actually use for what I have? The board I have is the 44 pin PIC18F45K20.

I didn't think this would be that hard to learn, after a week...off and on I am about to give up.

 

If you are on windows just download the latest version of MPLAB http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=1406&dDocName=en019469 then keep the C-compiler that came with your kit. This will make your first steps more easy.
But take your time to uninstall what you may have installed of MPLAB(X) and compilers. Install MPLAB and then the compiler

 

ALL of the lessons installed on my machine under:

C:\Program Files\Microchip\PICkit 3 Debug Express Lessons

Each lesson is in it's own folder inside there.

I agree it is a mess with Microchip changing their IDE and their compilers at the same time: much of the library and example code has not caught up (and perhaps never will). It makes it very tough for a new comer, but the stuff does eventually work.

Ask lots of stuff here and the Microchip forums. There may be more active then here.

(If you see directions to use a link script ignore it. That stuff about a link script is fairly obsolete so you don't need such anymore.)