The cure - get rid of all old 32 bit Perl installations, install 64 bit.

Nope. The only cure is to learn how qx// works :)

dir.exe dir.bat dir.com ... all different beasts than "dir" that cmd.exe has built in ... what gets called? It depends
perlop#qx/STRING/
perl windows backtick problem
Re: autodie and IPC::System::Simple on Windows
Issue with backticks in ActiveState
Re: Strange qx under windows behaviour
differences in dir?