Apparently it couldn't create another instance of this process with one still hanging out there

I don't think it even tries. If the application is already running, it will send the commands to that process. That means it was sending commands to (and waiting for a reply from) the non-responsive process. I'm not too sure about this.

In reply to Re^3: Can't create Win32::OLE object by ikegami
in thread Can't create Win32::OLE object by EyeOpener

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