I am having trouble with one of my avrs. After the last key change, everytime I try to program it, I get an error "error writing flash to memory" I have tried everything I can think of but nothing works. Is it possible the atmel is bad? Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Sounds like the AVR has become corrupt. Keep trying it and if all else fails try one of the cleaning programs that are floating around.

is there a program you might suggest??

the erase option works for me