One possibility is that you might need write access to the registry key HKEY_CLASES_ROOT.
Assuming perl is installed in C:\Perl, from the cmd.exe command line:
SET PATH=%PATH%;"C:\Perl"
ASSOC .pl=Perl
FTYPE Perl="C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe" "%1" %*

[download]
If you find this is only temporary, when it does not work then use the ASSOC and FTYPE to see what else is happening, if anything. Failing that you can always put the above into a .bat file and run it from a short-cut with something like:
%comspec% /k "C:\runperl.bat"

[download]
that's what I do when I have more than one Perl version installed.

In reply to Re: Registering Perl on XP failure by cdarke
in thread Registering Perl on XP failure by merrymonk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.