USB-Blaster on Windows 7

[Altera_Forum]

Hi, 

 I installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 today and got Quartus II V9.0 up and running OK, didn't even reinstall it, just used the installation I previously used in Vista x32. I tried to install the USB-Blaster using the drivers that came with Quartus II V9.0 but Windows 7 complains about them not being digitally signed and installing them either way will not work. Those drivers that came with the Programmer V9.x sp2 won't work either.    Has anyone been able to circumvent this problem? I am aware that Windows 7 is really new and Altera probably hasn't finished porting their software completely. I still have the Vista installation with working QII and USB-Blaster, so there's no need for an immediate fix. Just wanted to let people know that they probably won't be able to use the USB-Blaster yet.

[Altera_Forum]

Alternatively, on win 7 64 you can press F8 after POST and then select "Disable Digital Signature Verification" (or something like that). Then when the OS loads it will load the drivers without problem. But this has to be done on each reboot.

[Altera_Forum]

<RANT> 

First, thank you altera FORUM people for all of your help.   big, jucy NON-THANK-YOU'S to the  altera tech support people who dont  seem to be able to read the forums and suggest to their manement that they have a serious issue here, and it is only going' to get worse as WIN7 gets more popular, because we have no alteranative anymore.   Second: Wow, what a total fail win7 and altera make togeather.    Silly me, I bought a new (sucky win7 but I have no choice!) os computer, and I though that Altera would have their $hit togeather, and if I simply installed the Q11.x programmer  surely these windoze 7 issues would have been resoved by Altera by now.    Nope. 2 days of fighting with it later, and the  only way I got it to work was to use the 7.2SP3 drivers.     Seriously Altera, get your act togeather. I know  that windows sucks, but the people that made my  $150 USB o-scope seem to get it right, and I am  sure you folks have some people that are smarter than they are.      </RANT>

[Altera_Forum]

Worst of all, Windows 8 is just around the corner. Most companies will switch to it and we'll struggle again. 

I just attended last week to an Altera exhibition and one of the guys accused me of 'unfair business practice' because I told him I stopped using altera in 2006 and only use the X guys. I didn't recall in the moment why I changed and just after been back home and checking my -many, many- altera based boards I recalled that I was FORCED to switch right after Vista came out.

[Altera_Forum]

Wow, that's a top rant. Thankyou. 

 I looked back through the thread and couldn't find your original problem description I'm afraid. It would be nice to know what problem you're having which is solved by 7.2sp3 but not by 11.0sp1. Thanks.

[Altera_Forum]

Let me start by saying… 

 I am not one of these people that “has to” run the latest OS, but I wanted to run a 64 bit OS to try and speed up the very long compile times I get when I have a nearly full Cyclone3. 64 bit Quartus made claims of being better, and I figure that the 4G (3G really) limit of 32bit x86 was possibly a speed killer for Quartus.  I was assured by the Altera tech sales team that  Quartus 64 bit is the way to the future, so I bit… Anway…..   ----Altera tech support staff: This you really ---- ----need to try yourselves to see the problem. ----   Go get a new win7 machine, that has never had Quartus installed on it, and plug in  a usb-blaster. Be sure that this is a “fresh” computer – NOT a VM, NOT a computer that  someone un-installed Quartus on, not a computer that was running anything Altera – ever. Get a machine that truly has never had  any Altera stuff on it. (because stuff left in the driver cache and the registry may give you  artificially good results)     Then the fun begins. Go download the Q11.x  programming software and install it. This will make it so that you can have the "latest" device drivers for the USBBlaster in your Quartus directory.    Then plug in your USBBlaster. Windoze will do the  “ding dong” and start looking for the driver on the internet. (FAIL!) – you might want to fix this too  while you are at it – but lets not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Windoze will not find the drivers, and will ask you to look for it on your computer.  (or it may just fail out – I forgot / suppressed the  awful memory of this). Windows will then make the “Something bad-usb wise just happened “d-d-dong” sound. (It is OK at this point to say a few of your favorite expletives)     Using the control panel, open systemàDevice  manager. The usb-blaster will be in there with a  yellow mark next to it. Click on it and “update” the driver. Use the Altera provided drivers in c:\altera\11.3\programmer\drivers\ (or whatever the path is, I am doing this from memory now) Windoze will try and install the drivers and then give you a bunch of useless errors, and not get the USBBlaster to a useful sate.   such errors include: "Cant install device, the service name is already in use" "Windows cannot find the driver for your device" "Error 28"   The harder you try to get it to work, the more the errors you will get.   You will really start to hate the “d-d-dong”  “something bad USB just happened” Windoze sound. Get used to it. You are going to hear it allot.   Eventually, you will install and uninstall many versions of USBBlaster drivers. Finally you will find this forum, read this thread, and install the 7.2 drivers. You will have to agree that you are installing an  unsigned driver. At this point you will try anything,  and you will be rewarded for your bold and courageous  choice. 60 or so seconds later you will hear “Ding-Dong” from Windoze, indicating that (finally) something good usb-wise just happened! Yay! You will then have a working USBBlaster!     I am very frustrated because this is the 3rd time I have needed to install the USBBlaster on a 64 bit machine (ranging from 2 years ago with winXP 64) I had a BUNCH of tech support calls to 1-800-800-epld (or whatever the 800 help number is/was) and I had also had a lot of E-mail correspondence with the  Altera tech support. In that time, no one at altera had any useful suggestions. My local Arrow FAE: FAIL. He never once returned ANY of my calls to him. (I started using Altera products 15 years ago, before he had graduated from junior high. I guess I am just not that important of a customer to him.) Anyway, all I got from email and 800 support was stupid novice suggestions like "use a shorter usb  cable" and "shorten the length of the 10-pin JTAG connector" - as well as "reboot the PC" and “un  install and re install Quartus and the drivers"   I will give the tech support line some slack, as this was my experience 2 years ago with winXP 64, but I was greeted with difficulties like this on my first win7 install,  (about 1 year ago ) and I somehow got it working. I am thoroughly disappointed with my latest experience 2 days ago, where I had to install the 7.2 drivers.    At first I was willing to blame myself, but this is the 3rd troublesome 64 bit install I have had with usbblasters, across 3 different computers, 3 brands of computer, and  with multiple usb-blaster cables. I now see this as an  Altera configuration management issue. Someone at altera needs to repeat my experiments, and try and install a usb-blaster on a FRESH 64 bit win7 computer. I bet  after that the next version of quartus will then get the 7.2 "right" drivers.    The thing is, the usbblaster uses the FTDI USB bridge. FTDI is easy to work with, (I use them in my own designs) and has supported 64 bit windows for years. Hell, Altera, you had this working in version 7.2! just carry that over.   OK sorry for the second rant..    ---Lou

[Altera_Forum]

I have been trying some of the suggested solutions to get Quartus II V11 to recognize the USB baster. I loaded the suggested set of signed drivers and managed to get the Device Manger to recognize them and load them. However, how do I get Quartus II to recognize the usb-blaster. When I go to configure the programmer, it only allows me to select Byte-Blaster or Ethernet Blaster.

[Altera_Forum]

I have windows 7 home premium.  

I tried to browse for the drivers as the manual indicated by going to C:\altera\10.0\quartus\drivers\usb-blaster\x32 OR C:\altera\10.0\quartus\drivers\usb-blaster\x64 but that didnt work for me. I downloaded wasabi_rice's attachment, put it in the "drivers" folder and browsed as above to it and that didnt work either.  Then i browsed the C:\altera\ and windows located the drivers. I have no idea if it's wasabi_rice's package that worked or the drivers are actually located smwh else, I'm just glad it worked :)

[Altera_Forum]

&#35874;&#35874;&#65292;&#25105;&#29616;&#22312;&#26126;&#30333;&#20102;&#12290;

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  I have been trying some of the suggested solutions to get Quartus II V11 to recognize the USB baster...  --- Quote End ---  The first thing you need to get sorted is for the Windows device manager to see the blaster cable. After opening device manager open the "Universal Serial Bus Controllers" and you should see the USB-Blaster in there.  Once the driver is installed Quartus should see your cable automatically - there should be no need to add it. If Device Manager is happy try running jtagconfig` from a command window and check that a `jtagserver` process is started in the task manager. Jtagconfig should list your cable in its output.  If device manager does not show a USB-Blaster then you should look for suspicious devices. I've always seen them show up under "Unknown device" but windows isn't always very helpful here. Right click on them and select "Properties" then the "Details" tab. Take a look at the hardware IDs property - if it's VID_09FB&PID_6001 then you have a driver problem, if it's VID_0&PID_0 then you have a hardware problem.

[Altera_Forum]

I got the "USB Blaster" in Device Manager installed ok. I use Windows 7 64 bits. However Quartus II still doesn't see it. This is version 11. However I also have 9.1 on the same system and it sees it without problems and uses it ok. I keep 9.1 because I've found several features like this or using the ByteBlaster don't work in the latest versions. 

In many occasions I've had problems with newer Quartus versions I just try 9.1 and it works ok. So, if you are not using the latest FPGAs then I'd recommend to stick with 9.1.

[Altera_Forum]

I'm interested in why it doesn't work. Are you on 32 bit? Which version 11 are you using (11.0, 11.0 sp1 or 11.1)? Thanks.

[Altera_Forum]

that's interesting, Windows 7 wasn't even officially supported in 9.1 

 i haven't had any trouble with USB Blaster on Windows 7 including all releases since 10.1

[Altera_Forum]

Well something I found just now is that if I boot up the system and open 11 then it doesn't detect the USB Blaster cable. But if I start 9.1 (which detects it ok), then close it and open 11.0 then 11.0 works ok. So it must be something in the service start up... I use windows 7 64 bits.

[Altera_Forum]

I have installed the USB-Blaster on my computer with W7 64-bits too!

[Altera_Forum]

danengel  

Altera Beginner   Join Date: Apr 2010 Posts: 1 Rep Power: 703   Re: USB-Blaster on Windows 7 You don't need the full 7.2 installer, only the standalone programmer:  ftp.altera.com -> outgoing -> release -> 72sp3_quartus_programmer.exe  (sorry, I cannot yet post links because I just joined the forum, and you need 5 posts to enter links)  Download and install this, then open the device manager, select the USB-Blaster and install the driver from this location:  C:\altera\72sp3\qprogrammer\drivers\usb-blaster\x64  It works fine on my Windows 7 x64.    thanks I had the same problem with this I am resolved

[Altera_Forum]

I registered altera forum just for this driver. Thanks alot!

[Altera_Forum]

Your USB Blaster WIN7 X64.zip driver did the trick. THANK YOU!!!!

[Altera_Forum]

Quartus II 12.0 was just installed on a 64-bit Windows 7 PC. The USB Blaster can be seen under control panel; but when I try to add hardware in the programmer portion of Quartus II, the USB Blaster is not listed. I have Quartus II 11.0 installed on my Windows XP PC, and the USB Blaster appears as a selection under add hardware as soon as I plug its cable into the PC's USB port. Any suggestions?

[Altera_Forum]

I had a similar problem with Quartus 9SP2 drivers. Win7 said driver wasn't signed, so it would not allow it to load. There was an indication under device manager that something wasn't quite right. The USB Blaster was there but would not show up under the programmer hardware setup. I downloaded the signed driver from this forum thread# 19233 

I manually updated the driver found that and all was well. Everything configured and worked. Try it! Good luck!

[Altera_Forum]

thanks wasabi it is working

[Altera_Forum]

i tested it on quartus 11.1sp2 web edition. 

the wasabi driver didn't work, however the 7.2sp3 driver did work.