Using VBA to find HTTP redirects

Hi,

I'm trying to find a way to get VBA to do the following:

1. Follow a URL
2. Check if it's being 301 redirected
3. Get the URL it's redirecting to
4. Check that the redirect is not a 404

I made a way to use Internet Explorer to do this, but it means IE has to load and finish rendering the entire page each time. (This is faster than I can do it manually, and obviously means I don't need to be there, but it's kinda slow)

Any ideas?

Thanks,