How about the event logs, particularly the security logs ? There could be firewall or authentication issues.

The die message is empty! I really don't understand what's going on...

Also, I can't figure out where the log are on my WinXp pro, running ActivePerl...

You can use the "event viewer" to track logged error and status messages. From a command prompt, or the "Run" dialog, type "eventvwr" to bring up the event viwer, and examine recent APPLICATION and SECURITY messages.

Re: Getting perl to report errors - as others have indicated, the Win32:: code apparently does not place the errors in $!.

Instead, you need something like:

use Win32::Service;
use Win32;
...
if (! Win32::Service::GetStatus($host, $serviceName, \%status)){
   die "Cannot get $serviceName status : $!\nWin Error:" . Win32::GetL
+astError() . "\n";
}
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     Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.        --Alan Perlis

When you say 'die message', do you mean the $! variable. If so, you may need to examine the $^E instead, as some Win32:: modules set this instead when there is an error.

You could also try dumping the hash returned by the GetStatus() function to what it contains, using something like the Data::Dump module.