A window error detector for a receiver capable of operating in a discontinuous transmit mode includes a soft decision decoder (210) producing soft output and generating window error signals. A detector (214) is coupled to the soft decision decoder for detecting a bad frame when the window error exceeds a bad frame threshold, wherein the threshold is altered based on the discontinuous transmit state. A turbo decoder (210) for a receiver includes a soft decision decoder and a window error detector (214) coupled to the soft decision decoder. The window error detector generates a bad frame indication. The turbo decoder stops iterative processing of the data associated with a window when the window error detector detects that the window does not result in a bad frame indication.