Not sure if this ever got solved, best info I could find was recompile. I uninstalled perl, downloaded and installed Activestate 5.10.1 build 1007 Then I Installed MinGW Then downloaded source for: PAR PAR-Dist PAR-Packer for each I ran the make / install steps using dmake (NOT NMAKE) gzip/untar cd perl MakeFile.PL dmake dmake test dmake install Had a couple test failures (nothing major I dont think) Everything worked afterwords. Quite well actually, compiles seemed faster than before. Running on Windows XP also.