Belated reply to this post, I too had this problem. It turned out in my case that my Nano clone ATmega168 had a differing signature to the one in the avrdude.conf file. (0x1e 0x94 0x06 when it should have been 0x1e 0x94 0x0b a subtle typo). I edited the conf file to suit , retried and it uploaded ok. However , I suspect any other ATMega168 boards with the correct signature (assuming original conf is correct) will now fail until I reset the file. FYI use file->preferences->settings tab to enable verbose mode when compiling or uploading sketches etc for more detailed messages.
Belated reply to this post, I too had this problem. It turned out in my case that my Nano clone ATmega168 had a differing signature to the one in the avrdude.conf file. (0x1e 0x94 0x06 when it should have been 0x1e 0x94 0x0b a subtle typo). I edited the conf file to suit , retried and it uploaded ok. However , I suspect any other ATMega168 boards with the correct signature (assuming original conf is correct) will now fail until I reset the file. FYI use file->preferences->settings tab to enable verbose mode when compiling or uploading sketches etc for more detailed messages.