The default behavior that I see is that the pulse LED pulses until I try to program a chip, whether or not there is a chip in the socket. When I load the bootloader, the prog LED turns on during programming in addition to the pulse LED. The prog LED turns off after programming, and the pulse LED returns to pulsing.
Are you seeing any error in the Arduino window?
Are you programming chips successfully?
Did you make any changes to the ArduinoISP sketch?
What type of Arduino are you using under the ISP Shield?
