Thanks again, zentara.

Ugh. The whole reason I chose to use Capture::Tiny (after much research) is because it purports to solve all the problems that all the other methods of forking and exec-ing on Windows do not. I read its author's presentation titled How (Not) to Capture Output in Perl.

I certainly hope I don't have to abandon using Capture::Tiny now. After all, it's working brilliantly. What's failing is something related to my use of Parallel::ForkManager.

What's failing is something related to my use of Parallel::ForkManager.

Would you be willing to try a manual fork method?

For instance:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#by Zaxo of perlmonks

my @apps = (
   [qw(/path/to/foo args of foo)],
   [qw(/path/to/bar args of it here)]
);

#to avoid Zombies
$SIG{CHLD} = 'IGNORE';

for (@apps) {
   defined(my $cpid = fork) or die $!;
   $cpid or exec {$_->[0]} @$_ or die $!;
}
exit 0; # the parent

#If the apps don't run as daemons, you may need to have 
#them ignore SIGHUP or else call &POSIX::setsid so that 
#the parent's exit doesn't trigger an early demise of the kids.
[download]

or maybe try the following, remembering to try system(1,$cmd) instead of exec( $cmd)

#!/usr/bin/perl

my $child=fork(); # Spawn off a child
if ($child>0) {
    #parent
    exec ($app1) || die "Could not exec $app1:$!";
    exit(0); # Should never get here!
} elsif ($child == 0 ) {
   # Child process
    exec ($app2) || die "Could not exec $app2:$!";
    exit(0); # should never get here either
} else {
     die "Could not fork! $!";
}

# Evaluating $! will give you the reason you couldn't 
# spawn the exec'ed process.
[download]

---

I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth.
Old Perl Programmer Haiku ................... flash japh