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Guide: Getting Xilinx ISE to work with Windows 8 / Windows 10 (64-bit)
Posted by BytesGuy on 14 Jul, 2014 19:37 -
10/8/15: This guide will also work for Windows 10 64-bit
I recently scored a Spartan 3E Starter Board on eBay. So, thinking I was on to a winner as I used this board during my time at uni, I downloaded and installed Xilinx ISE WebPACK.
But the problem is, it barely works in 64-bit mode on Windows 8
The license manager and Project Navigator both just close when you try to open a file and PlanAhead only works in 32-bit mode.
Xilinx ISE does not officially support Windows 8 and it probably never will as Xilinx are focused on their new suite - Vivado. However, Vivado only works with 7 series devices and upwards, so no Spartan 3 or Spartan 6 FPGAs!
But all is not lost, here is how you can get ISE (64-bit) working on Windows 8.
Fixing Project Navigator, iMPACT and License Manager
Note: I am assuming you are using ISE 14.7 and have installed it to the default location- Open the following directory: C:\Xilinx\14.7\ISE_DS\ISE\lib\nt64
- Find and rename libPortability.dll to libPortability.dll.orig
- Make a copy of libPortabilityNOSH.dll (copy and paste it to the same directory) and rename it libPortability.dll
- Copy libPortabilityNOSH.dll again, but this time navigate to C:\Xilinx\14.7\ISE_DS\common\lib\nt64 and paste it there
- In C:\Xilinx\14.7\ISE_DS\common\lib\nt64 Find and rename libPortability.dll to libPortability.dll.orig
- Rename libPortabilityNOSH.dll to libPortability.dll
Fixing PlanAhead not opening from 64-bit Project Navigator
PlanAhead will not open when you are running 64-bit Project Navigator (e.g. for I/O Pin Planning), it just displays the splash screen but never opens.
To fix it, we have to force PlanAhead to always run in 32-bit mode.- Open C:\Xilinx\14.7\ISE_DS\PlanAhead\bin and rename rdiArgs.bat to rdiArgs.bat.orig
- Download the attached zip file
- Extract it. You should now have a file named rdiArgs.bat
- Copy the new rdiArgs.bat file to C:\Xilinx\14.7\ISE_DS\PlanAhead\bin
Now you should have a working ISE Design Suite on Windows 8 64-bit
Hope this helps!
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I've never had anything but trouble when installing ISE. I've encountered these same problems in the past before I downgraded from Win8 to Win7 (probably one of the reasons I downgraded). I've had trouble again just last month with ISE 14.5 on Win7 where I can't get anything to load. I wonder if the failure here is a similar problem with the DLLs.
Instead of really looking into it, I just deleted all of the files (because the uninstall wouldn't even come up) and I downloaded the massive ISE files again. Now, I can't even get the install executable to run because it keeps crashing. So frustrating.
At least I have a version of ISE working on another machine.
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I've never had anything but trouble when installing ISE. I've encountered these same problems in the past before I downgraded from Win8 to Win7 (probably one of the reasons I downgraded). I've had trouble again just last month with ISE 14.5 on Win7 where I can't get anything to load. I wonder if the failure here is a similar problem with the DLLs.
Instead of really looking into it, I just deleted all of the files (because the uninstall wouldn't even come up) and I downloaded the massive ISE files again. Now, I can't even get the install executable to run because it keeps crashing. So frustrating.
At least I have a version of ISE working on another machine.
ISE is a bit of a beast
It could have been that the download didn't totally finish, I had that problem before.
I'd suggest you download 14.7 in the split files (4 files of about 2GB), then you extract the first one (Xilinx_ISE_DS_14.7_1015_1-1.tar) and run the setup from inside there. It then asks you where the other 3 files are and checks their integrity. Takes a bit longer, but I have had more success that way. -
I'd suggest you download 14.7 in the split files (4 files of about 2GB), then you extract the first one (Xilinx_ISE_DS_14.7_1015_1-1.tar) and run the setup from inside there. It then asks you where the other 3 files are and checks their integrity. Takes a bit longer, but I have had more success that way.
Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a try. At least if it doesn't work, I don't have to download 6 GB to find out. -
I've never had anything but trouble when installing ISE. I've encountered these same problems in the past before I downgraded from Win8 to Win7 (probably one of the reasons I downgraded).
For the record, Xilinx has been pretty blunt about how ISE is not supported on Windows 8, and will never be supported on anything newer than Windows 7. ISE is officially deprecated, which of course is ridiculous because Vivado supports only Series 7 devices, and those of us still happily using Spartan 3AN and Spartan 6 and Virtex 4 see no reason to use Artix or whatever. Oh, that the smallest Artix devices are not available at all through distribution makes migrating to them rather impossible.QuoteI've had trouble again just last month with ISE 14.5 on Win7 where I can't get anything to load. I wonder if the failure here is a similar problem with the DLLs.
For what it's worth, I have 14.7 working well in Windows 7-64, both on a Dell machine and in a VMWare VM on two Macs running 10.9.4. -
@Newbzors
Nice detective work
I'm running ISE 14.7 on Linux Mint-17 x64 (Ununtu 14.4 based)
And my biggest challenge was to get PACE to work for CPLD's.
I just installed Quartus II 13.0sp1 (later ones (13.1+) doesn't support a lot of the older chips).
That installed quite easy in Mint-17 , but only until i had to use modelsim
Now i'd say Quartus & ISE are even in "linux magic to get them to function"
/Bingo
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I've never had anything but trouble when installing ISE. I've encountered these same problems in the past before I downgraded from Win8 to Win7 (probably one of the reasons I downgraded).
For the record, Xilinx has been pretty blunt about how ISE is not supported on Windows 8, and will never be supported on anything newer than Windows 7. ISE is officially deprecated, which of course is ridiculous because Vivado supports only Series 7 devices, and those of us still happily using Spartan 3AN and Spartan 6 and Virtex 4 see no reason to use Artix or whatever. Oh, that the smallest Artix devices are not available at all through distribution makes migrating to them rather impossible.
Agreed. I see no reason why they can't support Spartan devices in Vivado, they are still popular devices. If they don't do that, they could at least patch ISE for Windows 8, it wouldn't be hard for them as it 99% works.@Newbzors
Nice detective work
I'm running ISE 14.7 on Linux Mint-17 x64 (Ununtu 14.4 based)
And my biggest challenge was to get PACE to work for CPLD's.
I just installed Quartus II 13.0sp1 (later ones (13.1+) doesn't support a lot of the older chips).
That installed quite easy in Mint-17 , but only until i had to use modelsim
Now i'd say Quartus & ISE are even in "linux magic to get them to function"
/Bingo
Could you run Windows 7 in a virtual machine (VirtualBox for example)? My laptop is a Mac, so for ISE I am using my Windows 7 virtual machine and it seems to run quite nicely.
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Could you run Windows 7 in a virtual machine (VirtualBox for example)? My laptop is a Mac, so for ISE I am using my Windows 7 virtual machine and it seems to run quite nicely.
I could but won't ....
After installing ISE for the 2'nd time on Linux (14.4 and no1 14.7), and having made notes of the process.
It's just 15min extra to get to work perfect , and no hazzle with usb access in Vbox or getting a win7.
Actually i think both programs run fine on a x64 Mint17 now.
/Bingo
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Could you run Windows 7 in a virtual machine (VirtualBox for example)? My laptop is a Mac, so for ISE I am using my Windows 7 virtual machine and it seems to run quite nicely.
I could but won't ....
After installing ISE for the 2'nd time on Linux (14.4 and no1 14.7), and having made notes of the process.
It's just 15min extra to get to work perfect , and no hazzle with usb access in Vbox or getting a win7.
Actually i think both programs run fine on a x64 Mint17 now.
/Bingo
That's pretty cool, any tips for Linux users? True about VirtualBox, I had problems with usb before. VMWare seems to be much better in that respect. -
Having to use ISE and planahead for university currently, this just saved me a lot of effort of having to get a windows 7 install.
Thank you. -
Not Windows 8 but...
I got Xilinx to send me a disc with the last install, and I was getting a lot of errors installing in Widows 7 professional 64 bits from the DVD.
I had to copy the DVD to the hard drive and install from there. I think the problem is that it times out when unzipping the files directly from the DVD drive.
At least it was nice of them to send me the DVD just for the asking
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Having to use ISE and planahead for university currently, this just saved me a lot of effort of having to get a windows 7 install.
Thank you.
Sorry, long time replying! Glad it helped. I too used it at uni (although comp sci, I did a module on FPGAs) and at the time I had to give up with win 8 and used 7. Good job I only use windows in a virtual machine on my mac or I would have been annoyed having to reinstall!Not Windows 8 but...
I got Xilinx to send me a disc with the last install, and I was getting a lot of errors installing in Widows 7 professional 64 bits from the DVD.
I had to copy the DVD to the hard drive and install from there. I think the problem is that it times out when unzipping the files directly from the DVD drive.
At least it was nice of them to send me the DVD just for the asking
That's pretty cool. I didn't know they send out discs, might even request one myself. Is there a form to fill or something? -
hi thank you, i have the same problem with ise and plan ahead, and it's solved by using your method,
the problem then other tools like platform studio has the same issue, i suspect other tools has similar problem
could you please help me to solve that as well? -
Well, like others I too am using ISE for a University class and wanted to install it on my home PC for practice with a demo board I have. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I ended up here (home sweet home
) to find the solution.
Something I would like to add though. I recently upgraded to windows 10 on my surface pro 3 and of course, I experienced the same problems with ISE that windows 8 users were having.
I can confirm that the steps from the OP fixed these problems.
Though, I haven't tested everything for windows 10, at least now I can add a source to my project without ISE crashing.
Thanks BytesGuy
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Well, like others I too am using ISE for a University class and wanted to install it on my home PC for practice with a demo board I have. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I ended up here (home sweet home
) to find the solution.
Something I would like to add though. I recently upgraded to windows 10 on my surface pro 3 and of course, I experienced the same problems with ISE that windows 8 users were having.
I can confirm that the steps from the OP fixed these problems.
Though, I haven't tested everything for windows 10, at least now I can add a source to my project without ISE crashing.
Thanks BytesGuy
No problem! Glad I could help
Funny, I was just going to try this on Windows 10 today, so thanks for the feedback. It's a shame Xilinx doesn't support the older Spartans in their fancy new IDE, but where there's a will, there's a way
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I don't know how you figured this out, but thanks so much. I was starting to think I might need to drop back to Windows 7 for some legacy code I needed to update.
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I know this post is old, but I recently ran into the same problem.
Here is another fix:
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Thanks for the fix. Original post worked will on Windows 10 64bit in a VM.
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Thank you.
Saved my day.
Indeed Xilinx should figure out how to support the smaller FPGAs without this kind of hassle.
Wonder how you figured it out
Claus -
There’s a virtualized version of ISE 14.7 for Spartan 6 FPGAs for Windows 10 downloadable on the Xilinx website now:
https://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Xcell-Daily-Blog/Spartan-6-development-Windows-10-Upgrade-to-ISE-14-7-for-Spartan/ba-p/780272
I haven’t tried it though.
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It helps me a lot. Thanks for you sharing.
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hi thank you, i have the same problem with ise and plan ahead, and it's solved by using your method,
the problem then other tools like platform studio has the same issue, i suspect other tools has similar problem
could you please help me to solve that as well?
I am facing the same issue with Platform Studio. Please anyone help.
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Did you solve Xilinx Platform Studio problem ? I have a problem . When I click xilinx platform studio, xpsgui stops running. Please help me.
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I recently had a failed start up of ISE14.7 via VM after only what 4 months of not using it...
Tried a few things but ran across this on the main site when searching ise14.7:
https://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/sw_manuals/xilinx14_7/ug1227-ise-vm-windows10.pdf
Page 5 I seen:
Known Issues
.............
The ISE Virtual Machine Does Not Have Internet Access Enabled
by Default
You can give Internet access to the ISE VM by upgrading the networking configuration. See
Enabling Full Networking in Chapter 6 for details.
Click link to page 20 near bottom to see how to fix this known issue.
Once i did that it worked again! -
Very very very helpful.
Good luck!