>>I'm not sure I understand. CREATEOBJECT is slow, but only if it succeeds. If >you attempt to instanciate a server type that doesn't exist, CREATEOBJECT is >fairly fast in returning an error.
>
>That's my point....it's slow. It is not the most efficient way to determine if an class is registered on the workstation...

I was under the impression that he wanted to instanciate Word, unless it didn't exist, in which case he would do something else. So there is very little wasted time, CREATEOBJECT is only slow if it succeeds, but if he finds that Word exists on the machine, he needs to instanciate it anyway.

I agree with you though, if you don't need to open Word anyway, the registry is much faster than trying to instanciate it just to see if it exists.