17th April 2002

I hate when my data is invalid. Worse yet, I hate when my computer says my data is invalid. Lockergnomie Brian Rossbach is in the same boat. "The problem stems from installing a PCI card on a Windows XP machine. When you try to load the drivers for the device, you get an error that states that your data is invalid. If you install the card and then install Windows XP, you don't get this problem. Adding the card later produces trouble." It could be due to a "protection problem" within the Registry. The most frequent offenders have been sound and SCSI cards. Fire up REGEDIT.EXE and navigate to HKLM \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ ENUM \ PCI. There, you'll find a handful of "VEN" keys. These are your installed PCI devices. Within each one of these entries will be a separate (and just as cryptic) subkey. You're looking for a "DeviceDesc" for the piece of hardware which is causing the contention. Once you've found it, right-click the "VEN" key and select the "Permissions" option. Set this to "Full Control" and close Regedit. The installation should continue without a hitch. As always, it is wise (and recommended) to backup your data before playing with the Registry.