I doubt it's the real problem, but as an aside, when using Perl I never use a backslash ("\") as my directory separator, as you have to worry about creating unintended escape-sequences (you'd really want to write it as "D:\\" if you insist on using backslashes). You are much better off using a forward-slash ("/") as directory separator when working with Perl; this gives you cross-platform compatibility.

Jon