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I have taken a look at timequest but it seemed to me that i don't need the fancy stuff at this time since i "just wanted to constrain the timings in the current design".
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For someone new to both timing analyzers, TimeQuest is almost as simple to learn and use as the Classic Timing Analyzer to accomplish the same thing. With TimeQuest you don't need to worry about the complexities of the "fancy stuff" until you actually need to use those capabilities. When you do need them, you'll be glad you're using TimeQuest because it handles situations that the Classic Timing Analyzer can't or handles them better.
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Essentially, i'm trying to figure out why my design fails one out of every five times it runs on the same board. I doubt it has anything to do with I/O timings since all timings look ok when actually measured on my board but i want to rule this out by doing basic constraining of the I/O.
I'm using a Cyclone II and the timing margins are large so the classic timing analyzer should work well enough for this project.
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Anyone with unexplained hardware failures should make sure the design is fully and correctly constrained for timing and does not have something like asynchronous paths not handled properly by the design.
When people think of "large" timing margins, they usually have clock setup in mind for a clock slow relative to what the device can handle. Clock hold is critical for a design running at any speed.
The Classic Timing Analyzer does not enable recovery and removal analysis by default. If anything in the design needs a synchronous deassertion of a reset going to the asynchronous clr or load ports of the registers, then this analysis is necessary.
"Processing --> Start --> Start Design Assistant" might catch problems with improperly handled asynchronous paths and other problems that could cause hardware failures. The messages might not all make sense (file a mySupport service request for anything that needs to be explained better on help pages reached by right clicking the messages). However, the Design Assistant could very well expose the cause of your failures.
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