I have no idea why you are being so senselessly hit, however, it cannot be the $foo . "foo" . $bar thing.

I am doing this kind of stuff all over and if it were a problem I'd be toast. But I'm not (not yet, at least...).
If I were you I'd check system stuff like service packs on the NT box. A signal handler may help in pinpointing the problem (like: local $SIGNAL{INTR}= \&handle_intr).

If you have a debugger and you feel like building from source, you can debug the snafu.<p Rather generic advice, I know...

Cheers,
alf