According to the docs:

The method is overloaded in that if the supplied SOURCENAME argument contains one or more literal '\' characters (an illegal character in a SOURCENAME), it assumes that you are trying to open a backup eventlog and uses SOURCENAME as the backup eventlog to open.

You are remembering to double your backslashes aren't you? 

 c:\\windows\\system32\\config\\file.evt

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In reply to Re: Using Win32::Eventlog by BrowserUk
in thread Using Win32::Eventlog by Al_Gee

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