Error -2147417851: COM Exception in Illustrator CS6 64bit

I am running 64bit Illustrator version 16.0.3 on Windows 7 and when I try to run the following code in VB.Net 2010 I get

Creating an instance of the COM component with CLSID {B9D4209B-1A9A-40FF-8ABD-2636E7987BF5} from the IClassFactory failed due to the following error: 80010105 The server threw an exception. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80010105 (RPC_E_SERVERFAULT)).

It seems that once the oIllustrator object is instantiated the application has not yet loaded completely as the menu in Illustrator has yet to appear and so any of the code in red will fail with a COM exception.

The only way I can avoid the COM exception is by adding a thread.sleep. EIther this is a bug or there must be a better way of doing this.

Of course if Illustrator is already loaded then rerunning the code is not a problem only when Illustrator isn't running and it has to load then this becomes a problem.

Originally I used CreateObject but I still had the problem.

        Dim oIllustrator As New Illustrator.Application

        Dim oEPS As Illustrator.Document

        Dim oTextFrame As Illustrator.TextFrame

        Dim oTextRange As Illustrator.TextRange

        Dim xPath As String = "\\dfs\Graphics\Images\"

        'Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000) 'Prevents COM Exception error 80010105 by allowing Illustrator more time to fully load

        Dim oEPSSaveOptions As New Illustrator.EPSSaveOptions

        oIllustrator.Application.UserInteractionLevel = Illustrator.AiUserInteractionLevel.aiDontDisplayAlerts

        oEPS = oIllustrator.Open(xPath + "test.eps")