Installing USB asp Drivers on Windows 8

Installing USB asp Drivers on Windows 8.1

When we are dealing with AVR programming, after create the codes in our development machine we should write the code into the device. For this purpose, we need a tool which we called Downloader or Programmer. This tool will “burn” the code into AVR CPU using spesific port.

One popular tool is USBasp (http://www.fischl.de/usbasp/). This tool is a USB in-circuit programmer which consists of an ATMega88 or an AtMega8 and a couple of passive components. In short, we need no special USB controller anymore.

Sometimes, we might face a problem installing usbasp drivers on Windows 8.1. But, this article will discuss about how to install those drivers.

 

Precaution

The method described here will require machine to restart. Make sure you have write down the steps before proceeding.

Identify The Problem

he main problem is that Microsoft doesn’t allow us to install drivers which are not ‘digitally signed’ directly (or easily) on Windows Vista and later version (7, 8, and also 8.1). To get around this, we must temporarily disable the signature verification process.

Phase 1: Disable Driver Signature Enforcement

1. Enter “start screen” and open “PC Settings”
2. Choose “Update and recovery” option in the left panel.
3. Choose “Recovery” option in the left panel
4. Click on “Restart now” button, below the “Advanced startup” section then click “reset” button to begin resetting.
5. Once machine is restarted, we will face several options which we can choose by pressing F1-F9. Choose F7 for “Disable driver signature enforcement”

Now, the machine will boot with no driver signature enforcement. We can then install the driver to our machine.

Phase 2: USBasp Driver Installation

Download the driver fro Windows from USBasp (http://www.fischl.de/usbasp/). The latest version is version 2011-05-28.zip which can be downloaded here. Read the readme first. Because I use WinAVR version 20100110, i will extract the libusb_0.1.12.1 folder as D:\libusb_0.1.12.1.

Plug the USBasp in to USB port. Windows will try to recognize the device. It should be recognized but it lacks of driver so the process is not finish.

Open “Device Manager” on “Control Panel”. Look for Other devices. We have USBasp device there.

Right click on it and click on “Update Driver Software…”

Click on “Browse my computer for driver software”.

Type the location of folder “D:\libusb_0.1.12.1″ and then click “Next”.

Windows will give warning as it can’t verify the publisher of the driver. Just ignore it and select “Install this driver software anyway”

Let the installation proceed and wait until it finish.

Done.