vb6 problem with winsock activex control

After getting no response to my querry using VB.Net, I went back to VB6 and found a solution.

What I am doing is sending a string *01X01\r to a controller through TCP using the ActiveX control.

Problem appears to be with the backslash in the string above. The backslash doesnt appear to send through the activeX control causing the response back to be a timeout (which means that the communications are setup correctly).

I am sure its the backslash as I have a working dos based program I am able to feed strings to and get the results, and when I leave off the \r I get the same message that is being returned to the VB program.

Any suggestions on why this doesnt work or better yet how to make it work?

there is also the possibility that the headers are causing the problem. Is there any way anyone knows of to strip the http headers (or does the winsock control even use them) when sending the string?