Just for kicks then: Fully-qualify it:

    my $upload_dir = "C:\\Users\\scott\\Web\\TEC\\images-user";
      :
      :
    open ( UPLOADFILE, ">$upload_dir\\$filename" )
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When all else fails, go back to the absolute.

Okay - here is the return:

$upload_dir = [c:\users\scott\web\tec\images-user]
$filename = [Me_1.jpg]
$upload_dir/$filename = [c:\users\scott\web\tec\images-user/Me_1.jpg]
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All that looks right - and again i see the file being created - but its EMPTY - it least now i know im not CRAZY CRAZY!

And thank you EVERYONE for taking time to be aggravated like I am! :)

Try uploading a small text file to this test script

#!perl 
use strict;
use CGI qw( :standard);
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

my $q = CGI->new;
print $q->header(),$q->start_html();
for my $p ($q->param){
  print "$p =  ".$q->param($p)."<br/>"
}

print "<pre>";
my $upload_filehandle = $q->upload("photo");
while ( <$upload_filehandle> ) {
 print $_;
}
print "</pre>";

print $q->end_html;
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poj