Checking if website has ODBC error with vb.net

I use vb.net to display a website created by one of my colleagues in a webbrowser object. I don't have any control over the site at all and when it has problems I'm not aware until the webbrowser in my form can't load the page.

I would therfore like some way of testing if there is an issue with the back-end database for the site (this is usually the problem), the site itself is up but the database is offline.

When there's a problem the site displays:

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80004005'

Could anyone suggest a simple way to check for this in vb.net?

Thanks!