Yeah, you’d think so, but sometimes important errors just get eaten by eval{} structures buried deep-somewhere, and they can be so way-deep that you never do find them.   (Plus, Windows code is often “tested” by Administrators.)   It is annoying, yes, and shouldn’t be that way, yes, but ... when something goes wonkers for “an ordinary user” (i.e. a corporate Joe) in the Windows environment, then permissions, especially to common or temporary files, less-so to the registry keys, have become my first-guess.   (And certainly not “just with Perl.”   Windows has become too-complex for its own good.)   ;-)