in reply to Redirecting input and output of child process to inet socket fails on Win32
Only quickly reading over your problem, I once wrote a socket program on my Win2000 box. It worked fine. I then moved it over to a Win95 box and it didn't work at all. The problem may be the inability of the OS. Have you attempted to run this on a 2000 or NT box? I know that may not be a great help but its just my initial thoughts.
Dean