I keep getting 'the data is invalid' when installing drivers in xp

Hi, firstly if you do attempt it, make sure you first backup the old Driver.cab (just rename it OLDDriver.cab and then place the Driver.cab file that you can get off of the Windows XP CD in the same folder as the 'newly' renamed OLDDriver.cab.
To get it off the CD, put the XP CD in to the computers CD/DVD tray and when the Welcome screen appears, click 'Perform additional' tasks and click 'Browse CD'. Then double click the I386 folder, locate the Driver.cab file and copy it (CTRL+C or go to 'Edit' at the top of the screen and select 'Copy') then on your computer go to C:\Windows\i386 and paste it into that folder where the old one was.
Once that is complete, try to install the drivers again.
If you don't have the XP CD, you could copy (not take) one from another computer running the same version of XP. But remember to ask them first.

If you get stuck, follow this guide.

I would also like to know first though (and I should have asked this first) have you just done a new install of XP recently? If you have, did you install the chipset drivers for your motherboard first?

Hey there, thanks again for the extra info.

I tried the above fix without success. Still get the same message when I try to reinstall the drivers on any of the USB ports, i.e. the files always start transfering and then stop halfway through with a message 'the data is invalid.'

I have not done a reinstall yet. These are all the things I have tried so far....

The machine is 2 years old and was working OK until the USB ports stopped working. They would not recognise data storage sticks or my MP3 player cable and would instead try to install them and then stop halfway through with 'the data is invalid message'. Strangely my wireless internet usb stick did still work. In order to rectify this I unistalling all the drivers on the USB ports and then turning off the machine in the hope it would automatically reinstall them again. It did not install the drivers on any ports so now I could not even use my wireless internet usb stick.

I then tried reinstalling the drivers using the driver installation cd that came with the motherboard but that didn't work.

I then bought a PCI card with some new USB ports but when i plugged that into the machine the computer did not recognise the new ports

I then edited the registry by trying to enable each single usb port so that it had full control but again, same problem again.

I have also tried pulling out the power cable and then restarting after that but still nothing :sigh: