Do your Perl scripts (files ending in .pl) show some sort of perlish icon when you list them using Windows Explorer? If not - if you get the generic icon, instead of something unique, then chances are you don't have that extension associated with Perl.

To do this you'll need to go into Windows Explorer, select the Tools menu, and then select "Folder Options...". When you've got that dialog box up, choose the "File Types" tab. Search for the file extension ".pl". Most likely you won't find it. If you don't, then select the "New" button and create that association. You'll need to know where perl lives on the computer, in order to enter the path here. Once you've got your extensions associated with perl, then you should be able to run your scripts from startup.

Just wondering - did you install your perl using Activestate's distribution? That should have made all your associations for you, unless somehow you decided not to allow this. If you installed perl yourself, you might want to consider using the Activestate distribution, because it has some useful conveniences like the perl package manager (ppm).