Check if a URL actually exists

We have seen many validations for URLs.
But what to do if the requirement is like to check whether a URL is in the NET.
In other words, how can one knows the URL given has not returned a 404 error?

Here's the code

/// <summary>
/// Checks the status of the specified URL.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="strURL">The URL that needs to be checked</param>
/// <returns>True if the URL exists</returns>

public bool IsURLValid(string strURL)
{
    string strResponse = "";
    try
    {
        string pattern = @"((http|ftp|https):\/\/w{3}[\d]*.|(http|ftp|https):\/\/|w{3}[\d]*.)([\w\d\._\-#\(\)\[\]\\,;:]+@[\w\d\._\-#\(\)\[\]\\,;:])?([a-z0-9]+.)*[a-z\-0-9]+.([a-z]{2,3})?[a-z]{2,6}(:[0-9]+)?(\/[\/a-z0-9\._\-,]+)*[a-z0-9\-_\.\s\%]+(\?[a-z0-9=%&\.\-,#]+)?";
//validatng url in case if it hasn't been validated earlier
        if(Regex.IsMatch(strURL,pattern))
        {
            WebRequest request = HttpWebRequest.Create(strURL);
            request.Timeout = 5000;
            strResponse = ((HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse()).StatusCode.ToString();
        }
    }
    catch(Exception exp)
    {
        strResponse = "";
    }
    return (strResponse=="OK")? true: false;
}

Does the work, but not very classy.
Any better ideas?

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