USB BLASTER Hardware missing in Quartus II under Win7 64 bit

[Altera_Forum]

That's really a bad news, 

 what happened is that we need big memory (around 5~6 G) and we have no choice but change to a 64 bit OS system.  And then like everybody knows, Win7 doesn't like our usb blaster. While with the support, now IT COULD BE RECOGNIZED BY WIN7 BUT COULDN'T BY ALTERA 80.   We now using (inside Quartus II, programmer) Hardware Setup -> Add Hardware ->  and just can't found USB-Blaster...   what else R we missed or what should we do instead??:eek:

[Altera_Forum]

There are several threads on the forum about using 64 bit versions of windows with the USB blaster. For example: usb-blaster on windows 7 (http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19233) 

 One possible solution:  Install older USB drivers from Quartus II 7.2 SP3 or install the newer drivers from Quartus II 9.1. Any version in between is not properly signed and x64 versions of windows require signed drivers.

[Altera_Forum]

I also have the exact same problem but running on XP Pro 64bit. Quartus 10.0 sp1, does not recognize the hardware. 

 I have been looking for solutions on the forums, but so far I have found nothing that was applicable or worked. The drivers appear in Device Manager and seem to have installed fine, however Quartus will not recognize.  I am almost ready to switch to Xilinx, as I am having too many issues with the Altera tools and my design is still in the early stages.

[Altera_Forum]

Hmmm... I have used the USB Blaster on several 64-bit platforms (Win7, Ubuntu and CentOS) with relatively minor issues. 

 On Windows7/XP-64 you could try installing the standalone qii programmer (https://www.altera.com/download/programming/quartus2/pq2-index.jsp) by itself to see if it's some sort of funky issue with the installer or the options you're choosing during installation.  As far as "X" tools go, they are not as well-designed as Altera's. True you might be able to get things working, but in my opinion you'll lose time due to tool quality during the rest of your design process.  Regards,  --slacker

[Altera_Forum]

Several years ago when I switched a design from Xilinx to Altera, one of the things I was happy about was the fact that I could get the Altera tools to work in 64 bit Windows. I was never able to get the Xilinx USB tools to work with 64 bit Windows. Of course, this is not to say that you couldn't have the exact opposite experience. 

 I was kinda lucky in a way though as the first version of Quartus I ever tried was 7.2 SP3. For this version 64 bit just worked. After that Altera kinda messed it up for a bit.