Hi,

are you sending your headers. Before any program output there must be a content-type HTTP header like this:

print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n";

Yes, I am sending the headers. I've tried using both .cgi & .pl with the same results.

Run through this to see you have everything set properly:

Your PATH contains the location to your perl/bin directory (most commonly installed to C:\perl\bin.

Your ScriptAlias looks something like : ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "C:/Path/To/Apache/cgi-bin/"

also could you post the contents of your script so i monks can take a look. There might be a code error.

One thing that is different from usual when you are doing CGI in the environment you describe is that the shebang line must be correct (this is not necessary otherwise under activestate). So make sure it is #!/perl/bin/perl -w or wherever you have installed it (I have /usr/bin/perl just like the real people). Also, if for some reason the apache is running on another drive, you need to set it with drive letter as well: #!c:/perl/bin/perl -w.

Also, you will want to examine your log files, access and especially error logs can be very helpful sometimes when trying to track these problems down.

One stupid question also, I am not trying to be condesending or anything, but you are restarting apache everytime you make a change, right? All in all, apache and activestate usually plays very well together on windows, although I have never run ME and never ever will.

Feel free to come back with more info about your problem, especially error logs.

I'm sure the script alias is working; it tries to execute and does give the 500 error (can't spawn child process) when I muddle the shebang so that it _doesn't_ find perl, it only tries to download when it actually finds perl. Besides which, <a href=http://www.perlmonks.com/index.pl?lastnode_id=147237&node_id=147474">I discovered today that it works fine from a remote machine, just not locally:

(and before anyone asks, yes I know WinMe is not secure enough to host a site, I just left it open long enough to test it)

I had already checked the logs, no errors are recorded when it tries to download (with or without -w); the access log shows the GET...200 and looks otherwise like it was successful. And, yes, I was reloading apache when I made changes (no worries about being condecending, I remember well from a former tech support job having to ask if the machine was plugged in...)

sigh...believe me I wish I was running this under unix/linux...unfortunately I'm doing this so I can work at home on a project for work, where they give me no choice of o/s...at least it will be NT there, hopefully that will be somewhat less problematic.

UPDATE: I was able to try the page from work today, and everything worked fine! So, it seems the problem only exists on the local machine, and may have to do with either a needed registry addition or deletion, or an option to be set or unset in IE (as I was already suspecting from the tests I'd already tried)

Heh, well, I solved the problem. Installed Netscape, no more problem. Figures...