After browsing through the CookBook this AM on the train, I think I may have found a neat way around this (registering to get the gui).. I'm not sure whether or not I can quote it in full here, but if you have the book you can flip to page 544. Title is "Removing the DOS Shell Window with Windows Perl/Tk"

Basically, you use a seperate perl program to launch the TK window. It makes use of Win32::Process - runs the TK prog as a detached process etc.. kinda fun. I haven't tried this yet but plan to "real soon now" You could then compile into an exe and run the exe to launch the TK app.

If someone tells me that it's alright to quote the CookBook I will post the code here..

<bold>Update:</bold> It works, I have a seperate program to launch a TK app, DOS window flashes and it goes away..