You may receive the above mentioned error if you updated a Nios® II 6.0 design to Nios II 6.1. The flash programmer in Nios II 6.1 requires that the name for the target board to be programmed should contain a long and short name. If a short name is not included the flash programmer will produce the error. As an example if your target board desription file contains the following label for the board:
USER LABELS
{
name = "My Development Board";
}
The flash programmer will generate an error. You need to include a short name in ( ) to remove the error, eg...
USER LABELS
{
name = "My Development Board (My Board)";
}