Downloaded MS SDK for Windows, run into issue: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1901279/windows-7-sdk-installation-failure , solved as described, found that command-line compiler is not here anymore, downloaded Visual c++ Express Edition, run your example from above, found that there is a difference with perl 5.10 in comparison to 5.16, though found also that the file perl510.lib is not available with strawberry perl, despaired, then found an old 5.12-installation of ActivePerl with perl512.lib, run the example again, found that one should start vc command line with admin rights otherwise hello.proj cannot be read, run it again ... - and it worked!!!

Some questions if I dare :-):

How to set the output to a project directory (now the .exe is being saved in C:/windows/system32 which is not a good thing)?

How to bind the perl source file at the time of compiling (my naive attempt in the OP with setting argv does not work)?

In any case - Many Thanks!!! BrowserUK, it was a rare sense of achievement in the passing year for me!