in reply to Windows XP trouble

See Anyone know how to get cmd line perl? and another thing to try is open cmd.exe and type set path, this will tell you if the perl bin dir is in your path. If not you can set it as admin under Properties of "My Computer" -->Advanced-->Environment Variables. There should be 2 panes, one for user and one for system. Find PATH under the system pane and edit it with the path to perl\bin.

"Nothing is sure but death and taxes" I say combine the two and its death to all taxes!