Ok, I finally found my error on this! Thanks to all who tried to help. I was requiring a file at the top of my code that had the following statement in it $ENV{"PATH"} = "";. This was effectively wiping out all my path information before I attempted to create a connection to the Oracle database. Strangely this exact same code works fine on a Linux OS. It seems the PATH environment variable is not as important there when trying to make a connection. I don't understand why. It seems like it should fail on both OS's but it doesn't. Thanks again for the help...