Duplicate record question

In order to check that a new users ID does not already exist in the database I thought it would be a good idea to put the Insert into a Try Catch statement so that I can test for the duplicate record exception and inform the user accordingly. I was also trying to avoid querying the data base before executing the Insert.

The problem is what to actually test for. When the code throws the exception it is a big long string . .

"Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint 'PK_Users_2__51'. Cannot insert duplicate key in object 'Users'"

I just thought that there has to be something simplar to test for than comparing the exception to the above string.

Can anyone tell me of a better way of doing this ?

(by the way I am only using Web Matrix and MSDE in case it matters)

MarkI would use a stored procedure, check for dups in the SP, and then return a code indicating success or failure.|||Isn't the error code that you'd compare against?