Whoa a minute! You wrote:

Case III: Windows 2000 server, v5.6.1 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread ,I have a simple "hello world" type of file (test.pl) and it shows my hello message. I get the same download DBI 1.2 and then try to run my script (code will soon follow) and I get this error here and not on the first two cases.: DBD::Oracle::db prepare failed: ORA-00942: table or view does not exist (DBD ERR OR: OCIStmtExecute/Describe) at C:\Perl\connect_2.pl line 28. Can't call method "execute" on an undefined value at C:\Perl\connect_2.pl line 2 9.

Sounds like you're not connecting to the correct database, hence the invalid tables or views. So you can't create a statement handle.

Do you have an updated tnsnames.ora file installed on that machine? Otherwise it won't know where the database is on the network.