First off, a few details. I am running IIS 6 and perl 5.8.4 on my webserver. What my internal website is SUPPOSED to do is allow a user to enter a computer name on a previous HTML page which passes that variable (strComputer) to the script which will query a MS SQL database for the encrypted password, the script will then decrypt the password and output it in a new browser window.

The problem is that the very first time I open my browser (tried both IE and Firefox with same results) and enter a computer name, the script always returns "-1" as the password. If I close the output window and re-submit (or enter a new computer name), it will return the correct password. I've included my code and I'm hoping someone can shed some light on my problem. For this posting, I did change the encryption key and server names that I am using.

use Win32::OLE qw (in);
use CGI qw(:standard);
$Win32::OLE::Warn = 3;
print header;
print start_html { title => 'Password Query' };

my $sqlserver    = "SERVER_NAME";
my $database    = "PASS";
my $pwdtble    = "_PASSWORDS";
my $key        = "AB928RQG";
my $target = param('strComputer');

# ERROR CHECKING
if ($target eq ""){
    print "<br><center><strong>You must enter a computer account.</str
+ong></center><br>";
    print "<p align='center'><input name='Close' type='button' id='Clo
+se' onClick='window.close()' value='Close'></p>";
    print end_html;
    exit 1;
}

my $text = retrieve($target);

print "<h2>Password: $text</h2><br></center>";
print "<p><center><input type='button' value='Close' name='close' onCl
+ick='window.close()'></center></p>";
print end_html;


sub retrieve{
    my $target = shift @_;
    use DBD::ODBC;
    my %history;
    my $DSN = "driver={SQL Server};Server=$sqlserver;database=$databas
+e";
    my $dbh  = DBI->connect("dbi:ODBC:$DSN") || return -1;
    if (not $dbh) { print "coud not connect\n";  return -1; }
    
    my $sth = $dbh->prepare("select password, date_modified from $pwdt
+ble where computername = ?");

    if ($sth->execute($target))
        {
        while (my ($password, $date) = $sth->fetchrow())
            { $history{$date} = decrypt($key,$password); }
        }
    else
        { return; }

    foreach my $date (reverse (sort (keys %history))) 
        {
        return $history{$date};
        }
    }    

sub decrypt{
    use Crypt::TripleDES;
    my $key = shift @_;
    my $e_text = shift @_;
    my $des = new Crypt::TripleDES;
    my $text = $des->decrypt3 ( $e_text, $key );
    return $text;
}
[download]

I've been pulling my hair out trying to figure this out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.