Anonymous - Thanks for your guidance. Discovered that the install I did for Log::Dispatch messed up Sys::Syslog. After removing that version of Sys::Syslog and getting the same result, I dedided to re-install perl. Because my instance of perl was so new, I decided to blow it all away and start all over again. That brought to the surface how I managed to mess up the Log::Dispatch install. The .ppd automatically generated by ActiveState was broken. I finally figured out that the best option was to choose another repo, like Trouchelle, which had a working version of Log::Dispatch .ppd. Once I used PPM to install the Trouchelle copy of Log::Dispatch, things are once more working properly. Thanks again.