I put together this code as a test from a project I am working on:

Code:
 Dim startDate As String = Date.MinValue.ToShortDateString
 Dim endDate As String = "1/1/2025"
 Using cn As New SqlClient.SqlConnection(mConString)
     Using cmd As SqlClient.SqlCommand = cn.CreateCommand
         Using da As New SqlClient.SqlDataAdapter(cmd)
             Try
                 cn.Open()
                 cmd.Transaction = cn.BeginTransaction
                 If endDate = "" Then
                     cmd.CommandText = "DELETE FROM Incubation WHERE [IncubationDate]>= '" & startDate & "'"
                 Else
                     cmd.CommandText = "DELETE FROM Incubation WHERE [IncubationDate]>= '" & startDate & "' AND [IncubationDate]<= '" & endDate & "'"
                 End If
                 cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()
                 cmd.Transaction.Rollback()
             Catch ex As Exception
                 If cmd.Transaction IsNot Nothing Then
                     cmd.Transaction.Rollback()
                 End If

             End Try
         End Using
     End Using
 End Using
Much of this is irrelevant, as it is vestigial remnants from the actual project. The key is that query. I concatenate in a local variable. If that local variable is something like '1/1/2024', then all is well. If the local variable (startDate) is set as shown, then I get an exception stating "The conversion of a varchar data type to a datetime data type resulted in an out-of-range value."

So, perhaps SQL Server doesn't like Date.MinValue. That's fine, because I could easily choose some other value that would work just as well. What has me really baffled, though, is that this works just fine in a different method which addresses a different table.

The table that this is failing on, has no data in it. Nor did the table this worked on, when it worked. The field was originally called just plain Date, which I thought was a bad idea, so I changed it to IncubationDate. That shouldn't matter, though, because it appears to all come down to startDate. If that is Date.MinValue, it fails here, while if it is some other date, it works here.

What is going on?