Yea, you should try compiling and running the start.c with ActiveStates version. My "start" I've created doesn't work with yours. And they are little bit smaller in size. It even seems like it looks for Perl modules in other places, and not where it should.
things will be in sync if I create same package from ActiveState's perl, but then there will be more DLL files around.
Alternatively, I can provide right LIB file.
But searching for modules should not change, perl modules are in ZIP and their DLL are near EXE,