Can the SSL library be used flawlessly in a windows service?

My software has three separate modules;
- the "core", which does all the grunt work (including sockets);
- a console output .exe, which is used to print debug output from the core
- a service .exe, which starts exactly the same procedures from the core as the console output

I'm using SecureSocket as a client to connect to remote hosts. When running the console output .exe, everything is fine. However, when running as a service, creating a connection fails a few times before it succeeds.

When the problem occurs, Connect() succeeds, but data sent afterwards never reaches the host. In fact, there seems to be a problem in the ssl handshake (although I can't tell, I'm far from being a SSL pro).

When a connection is finally established, everything seems fine. It is only the connection process that seems flaky.

Whether the library works under a service account depends on the exact (security) settings of the account.
For instance, we know there've been a number of problems with the library being run under the ASP.NET worker service account, because this account doesn't have a user profile and hence has no place to store cryptographic keys.