Guide: Getting Xilinx ISE to work with Windows 8 / Windows 10 (64-bit)
[link to original article]

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!

 win8planaheadfix.zip (0.93 kB - downloaded 5228 times.)