MAX V Board test system: No USB Blaster detected

Hi nickw1881,

What version of Windows are you using? Judging by the theme it's 8 or 10. I had similar issues before, where device appeared to be installed properly but would not be detected. Things to try:

1. Install the very latest blaster drivers from Altera, always reboot after driver installation.

2. Restart JTAG server service.

3. Run the board test utility as admin, you should also use admin to install any drivers or utilities.

4. run the board test utility in Win 7/8.1 compatibility mode.

I had similar dev kit running fine on Win 8.1 so it must just be a driver/Windows privileges issue.

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I am brand new to Altera stuff so I got the Max V dev kit and I am going to start learning but I have a snag here. It says No USB Blaster detected, even though I installed the driver and its right there in the device manager. Here's pic

http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=12146&stc=1

Also is there a really really basic 'getting started guide for max V', like how to open a max V dev kit example design in Quartus and compile/upload it to the max V dev kit (with links to the example code and explain which version of Quartus because there are MANY)?

The Altera ecosystem is very daunting for a person coming from TI and Xilinx. I need baby steps.

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Hey nickw1881, I believe this link might be useful to you: https://www.altera.com/support/support-resources/knowledge-base/solutions/rd10312012_472.html The board test system is rather peculiar with the environment variable setting. You may refer to the related solution in the link that I have provided you for the method to set the environment variable in your PC.

This is actually quite a common issue which should go away once the environment variable is set. Another thing to look out is on the USB Blaster installation: https://www.altera.com/support/support-resources/download/drivers/usb-blaster/dri-usb-blaster-vista.html The link is pretty detailed as a guide for you to check if the UB is installed properly. Good luck using the BTS! Cheers!

Regards,

Vinhael

I was having the same kind of issue, I found a culprit however and fixed it. I actually had reinstalled/changed versions of Quartus and the USB Blaster driver started acting the same way for me. Versions 12.1sp2 and 15.1 on Windows 7 64-bit. Posting this in case anyone comes looking. I think this is because I didn't have one of the .exe installers setup the driver. Pointing Windows at the driver provided in either installation gave me the same issue with detecting the programmer in Quartus.

Essentially, I think the driver script isn't adding usbblstr64.dll into the system32 directory. I looked at it, and it seems like its structured so amd64(x86-64) systems should get it, but it wasn't installed.

I copied */quartus/drivers/usb-blaster/x64/usbblstr64.dll into Windows/system32, and when Windows next went to find the driver via a little turning it off and on again, the problem went away. Happened on a similar coworker's setup also. Can anyone else replicate this?