A PCI Express compliant method and apparatus for preventing corrupt data being transmitted from a retry buffer of a transmitting component to a receiving component over a PCI Express compliant link. The method including storing parity or electronic error correction bits for each data entry in the retry buffer along with the data itself and then comparing parity or electronic error correction bits generated from a copy of the data from the retry buffer to the parity or electronic error correction bits stored in the retry buffer. If the two sets of bits do not match, a PCI Express link between the transmitting component to a receiving component is forced down.