Issue in VB.Net trying to create Word and Excel Objects using a service in Windows 11

Question

I have an issue in VB.Net trying to create Word and Excel Objects using a service.

Error message in the Event Viewer shows "Cannot create ActiveX component."

The issue only occurs on Windows 11 and the same code & service works as it should in Windows 10.

I have a service that runs as Local System account. Every 10 minutes it runs and has code to gather the text out of Word and Excel and writes to a SQL DB.

The code that fails is below in the Try/Catch:

        Dim objWordApplication As Object = Nothing
        Try
            objWordApplication = CreateObject("Word.Application")
            objExcelApplication = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
            MicrosoftOfficeInstalled = True
        Catch ex As Exception
            MicrosoftOfficeInstalled = False
            gEventLog.WriteEntry("Office Not Detected: " & ex.Message & " ")
        End Try

It appears the CreateObject is failing, but I can't determine why, nor can i determine how to get more information written to the event log, like maybe a message number that i can research further.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Brian