A method and an apparatus is presented for preventing an adapter card that has been reset from issuing spurious error signals due to the fact it is not synchronized with the system at the time it comes out of reset. To prevent spurious errors, the data processing issues a command to the adapter card that is to be reset that disables error checking before the reset command is sent. The reset command is sent next. After the adapter card completes the reset operation, it notifies the system that the reset is completed. The adapter card waits until it receives a command from the system to re-enable error checking before it turns back on error checking. In this manner, the system can insure that error checking is only turned back on synchronously with other system activities so that spurious error signals are not generated.