As error reports go, "but it still waits" is not very helpful......

I'd suggest that you try CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE instead of DETACHED_PROCESS...

Sorry...."but it still waits" was to mean, the parent cgi still waits for the console application to complete. No change from using CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE either.

Why does Windows have to be such a pita?

still waits for the console application t

Well that's fishy. It can't be detached from and attached to the console at the same time.

Why does Windows have to be such a pita?

You have to close the handles and muck with process groups and signals in unix. No easier.

There are valid complaints against Microsoft and Windows (parameter passing to processes, as a related example), but mind the baseless bashing. DETACHED_PROCESS works fine, and there's nothing complicated about it.

# launcher.pl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Win32;
use Win32::Process;

sub ErrorReport{
   return Win32::FormatMessage( Win32::GetLastError() );
}

my $detached = $ARGV[0];

unlink('foo');

Win32::Process::Create(
   my $ProcessObj,
   "c:\\progs\\perl5100\\bin\\perl.exe",
   q{perl.exe -le"sleep 5; open $fh, '>foo' or die $!; print 'done'"},
   0,
   NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS | ($detached ? DETACHED_PROCESS : 0),
   '.',
)
   or die ErrorReport();
[download]

>perl -e"print `perl launcher.pl 0`" & dir /b foo
[waits 5 seconds]
done
foo

>perl -e"print `perl launcher.pl 1`" & dir /b foo
[returns immediately]
File Not Found

>perl -e"sleep 5" & dir /b foo
foo
[download]

Are you using use strict;?