Installation of Xilinx ISE 13.4 on Windows 7

The first step is to install the ISE. It is a long process that can take more than an hour, so be prepared and start early!

If you have a Mac, you could use Parallels with Windows 7 running as a virtual machine. The ISE works in this setup as well.

The steps described below describe the installation of the most recent version of the ISE in April 2012: ISE 13.4

Go to Xilinx's Download site
Download ISE 13.4 full installer for windows. the file is 6 GBytes in length, and will take a while to download. You may want to take a nap once the download has started...
When asked for a userId and password, you can either create your own Id or use this one:
- This section is only visible to computers located at Smith College
Click Next
The file should start downloading. Once again, depending on the speed of your connection, this may take quite a long time.
Unpack tar file into directory (in Dowloads folder). If Windows complain that it doesn't know how to unpack a file with a tar extension, download the 7-zip open-source utility, and use it to unpack the archive.
Once in the exploded directory, run the xsetup application
Accept the license
Agree to the terms
Pick WebPack when asked for what to install
Accept all defaults and install in C:\Xilinx\13.4 folder
Install! (this will take a while)

Installing Xilinx ISE 13.4 on Win 7