Hey, I have something that I believe is similar to this, but it does not have anything to do with the DBI module. In my case however, it might have something to do with Data::Dumper and/or ActiveState Perl.

I thought I was just being paranoid or something, but when using the all-famous framechat script on my WinXP Apache server (okay, not the best, but it works!) running with ActiveState Perl, I twice had notepad open on the computer for no apparent reason. I was not running any other major programs at the time of either of these instances.

The strange factor comes with the fact that notepad was trying to access the internet. My ZoneAlarm Firewall came up with the whole "Do you wish to allow notepad to access the internet?" message, and I thought "what the heck?". Of course, both times I said "No" and so notepad did not open anything. Then after I found out that attempting to load ANY file from the internet with notepad loads plain text (including executable files). So I figured, "crap, I should have said yes to see what it was trying to access!".

Anyway, I have not been able to reproduce this behaviour. The second time it occured, it was the "Other Users" list in framechat that launched the notepad. I do think that it was somehow ActiveState Perl that did so, but I cannot prove it!

Okay, this probably has *nothing* to do with your post, but the whole "Windows", "ActiveState Perl", and "Opening File" (even if was only some type of error that was making Dr. Watson appear) got me to thinking of what twice happened to me :)

Disclaim: I am not putting down the awesome framechat. I use it all the time and it is great!