Raising Errors In Validate() Method

Hi,

I am building a custom component. In the Validate() method I am checking for various things. Here's a section of my code:
if (ComponentMetaData.InputCollection[0].InputColumnCollection.Count != 1)
{
return DTSValidationStatus.VS_ISBROKEN;
throw new Exception("You need to select one and only one column");
}



The problem I'm finding is that my Exception never gets thrown so I never see the error in the UI. if I reverse the 2 lines like so:
if (ComponentMetaData.InputCollection[0].InputColumnCollection.Count != 1)
{
throw new Exception("You need to select one and only one column");
return DTSValidationStatus.VS_ISBROKEN;
}

Then I get my error message in the UI but I never get anything returned from my Validate() method - which doesn't seem quite right to me.

I don't like using FireError() either because it merely puts the error into the Task list window - and who ever looks at the Task list window???



I'm basically just after some guidance about what people think is the "proper" way of doing this. At the moment I prefer to throw an exception because that way I get some errors in the UI.

Regards

Jamie