Not sure if this ever got solved, best info I could find was recompile.
I uninstalled perl, downloaded and installed Activestate 5.10.1 build 1007
Then I Installed MinGW
Then downloaded source for:
PAR
PAR-Dist
PAR-Packer
for each I ran the make / install steps using dmake (NOT NMAKE)
gzip/untar
cd
perl MakeFile.PL
dmake
dmake test
dmake install
Had a couple test failures (nothing major I dont think)
Everything worked afterwords. Quite well actually, compiles seemed faster than before.
Running on Windows XP also.