>The reason is that .NET is using .WriteLine to form the error message. The "dot, carriage return plus another character" that you see is a period (to end the sentence), and a NewLine (CR+LF).
>
>You might want to stay away from using the error message text in the logic of your code. You can probably accomplish the same function by using multiple Catches, one for each derived type of Exception:
>
>Catch e As System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException
>lcError = "The Query doesn't work!"
>.
>.
>Catch e As Exception
>lcError = "Generic error"
>
>.Net will automatically step through the Catches until it finds one that it can cast the thrown Exception to. I.e., the Catch that specifies a type that is somewhere in the derivation chain of the thrown Exception.
>
>What makes this very useful is that the online help is fairly consistient about listing the possible exceptions that can be thrown when calling a Method of a class. What isn't so great is that all of the Exceptions are spread out in different namespaces. But this shouldn't be a problem in code because you are most likely already using the namespace to call the Method.

Ok, thanks for all that.