Yes, this can all be done with Perl, win32, and win32::gui.

1. To go fullscreen you have to pass extra flags on window creation, but you can.
2. Yeah, grab a keystoke.
3. Sure thing, probably a for loop here...
4. Close that window you opened...

Second batch:

1. Easy, just change your shell in the registry or your win32.ini (did this change somewhere?)
2. That will work, too. I run a few p2e compiled programs using win32::gui on my workstation all day long for weeks at a time without problems. Mine tend to use around 9mb of memory and stay there, no leaks I've noticed...

Good luck!