ATMega:Invalid device Signature?

Hi LMR!

Yes my atmega chip is at it again ;-(.

Just after learning to burn bootloaders I was enjoying programming when one of the chips decided to go crazy.

Now it has a device signature of 0 x FF FF FF.(Read this signature from verbose output) I am getting Invalid Device Signature expected type is: 0x1e 0x95 0x0F .

Now I rechecked the signature from avrdude.conf file and as the chip was ATMega328P I even changed the signature to FFFFFF , restarted ide and this time the clever chip had signature of 0X000000.I rechanged signature in conf file to zero now and the chip's signature switched back to FFFFFF.(In short = Frustration)

I tried Avrdude -F command as illustrated here :http://www.ladyada.net/learn/avr/avrdude.html but to no avail.(Maybe I'm not doing it right?Perhaps?)

Anyway Does this mean chip is corrupted now?

I am using duemilanove with atmega328.

Quite peculiar in my opinion.What do you suggest?