[AccessD] Using MSXML2 on old machines - No dice

[Darren- Active Billing]

Hi Team,
With the help of the very clever Mr. McLachlan, I have been able to build a
nice tool that performs an API request and returns the relevant data I need.
All done using CreateObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP") - All very cool - Works a
treat - On my local Windows 8 machine. 
 
When I tried to run this Access dB on our old Win 2003 Servers (there are 2
- both are actually VMs) running IE7 and IE8 - It fails.
(I have no control over these servers BTW - not mine to manage and the last
time I rebooted one it did not come "back up" and caused chaos)
 
Anyway - after a week of googling and various attempts at resolution I have
discovered the issue is because I am running my API request against is an
HTTPS site and not an HTTP site.Turns out Older versions of IE are either
incapable of accessing HTTPS sites or requests to them are not being
processed.
This really is an area I have absolutely no clue about.
 
On each of our Win2003 Servers if I paste the API request URL into the
Address field of Firefox or Chrome- I get results. Cool. It's just IE is the
issue.
IE won't load an HTTPS sites outside our domain (i.e. from the real world)
IE will load our own internal HTTPS Sites hosted on our same server and
domain.
But nothing from the outside world. 
 
And yes, I have wasted hours and hours over this trying every conceivable
suggestion by the Google world. But obviously not the one I need :-)
Googling phrases and words such as "HTTPS not accessible IE7" or IE8 can't
access https site" yields a whole world of pain for a great many folk.
And the majority of suggestions I truly have tried - Maybe there is one more
I haven't that will be the solution. Happy to try whatever you suggest.
 
So...my question is - Anyone know of an alternative to
CreateObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP") or a way to get IE7 or 8 to access HTTPS
sites in the outside world.
 
Sorry for the long post - Many thanks in anticipation
 
D