Thanks again for your time and effort. Your help was to the point. Much appreciated.

Alas, you were right that the threads were not detached, so Perl didn't crash as apparently the detach() causes it. With the proper detach(), even on separate line, Perl crashs again :(

Also crashes if I move the detach to inside the thread

threads->self->detach();

Now if only AS will fix the problems in Windows Perl v5.8.2 soon or I will have to fall back to 5.8.0:(