I don't know how to capture the exit status with the above code, either. This may not be a big deal, but it would be really nice to solve.

You're expected to waitpid( $pid, ... ) to get the exit code or set $SIG{CHLD} = 'IGNORE'. You're leaving zombies around if you don't. I've no idea what this means on Windows though. Your code is leaky without that.