Hi, i've been following this topic with identical problems as retry, to the end of his last post.

Quote:
Could the copy of msvcr71.dll that I downloaded from http://www.dll-download.net/msvcr71.html bew corrupt?

It turns out it is corrupt! Its only ~54kb.

After trying that .dll, i tried the .dll from here:
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcr71

This weighs 340kb so obviously packs a lot more. After i placed this into system32 ssl finally worked.

I hope this solves your problem, i reg'd here just to tell you :P