I started playing around with FPGA development using the Terasic DE0 development board recently and the first problem I encountered was the installation of the USB blaster driver. As far as I know there is no problem in installing the driver on Windows 7 but if you are using Windows 8 or 8.1 then you probably ran into the problem of Windows not allowing you to install unsigned drivers. I lost a significant amount of time to make the driver work on Windows 8.1 so to speed things up for you, here is what you do. First, you need to obtain the driver to be installed. You probably already have it if you installed Quartus II, it comes with the installation.

This should work on anything windows 7 and newer, even tho we’re downloading the windows 10 kits. What we are doing is creating a new driver package and using the. Download the latest Windows drivers for Altera USB-Blaster Driver. Drivers Update tool checks your computer for old drivers and update it. Get latest Altera USB.

On my system it is located in: C: altera 15.0 quartus drivers usb-blaster Now, if you follow the instruction from you probably get to step 8 of the instructions after which you are not prompted with a window mentioned on step 9. This is due to the fact that Windows 8 doesn’t allow you to install unsigned drivers by default so you need to disable this security option. Press Windows key and type in “Change advanced startup options”, and enter the options. Zinwell Firmware Update. You should see the following window (click on the picture to enlarge).