Thank all of you for advice. Win32::Process::Open seem to be very promissing, only that I do some mistake. I have writen 2 short scripts:

# SCRIPT TO START NOTEPAD.EXE
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use Win32;
use Win32::Process;

$ApplicationName = 'c:\\windows\\notepad.exe';
$CommandLine = 'notepad';

$CreateOptions = NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS | DETACHED_PROCESS;
Win32::Process::Create($ProcessObj,$ApplicationName,$CommandLine,
    0, # Don't inherit.
    $CreateOptions,
    ".") # current dir.
    or die print_error();

#$ProcessObj->Wait(INFINITE) or warn print_error();
$ProcessObj->Wait(500) or warn print_error();

$ProcessObj->GetExitCode($ExitCode) or warn print_error();

print "[$CommandLine] exited with $ExitCode\n";

sub print_error {
    print Win32::FormatMessage( Win32::GetLastError() );
}

$pid = $ProcessObj->GetProcessID();
print "PID: $pid\n\n";


> PID: 3052
>
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The PID I get from the running process I pass to the second script:

# SCRIPT TO CHECK RUNNING PROCESS
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Win32;
use Win32::Process;

$pid = shift;

Win32::Process::Open($ProcessObj,$pid,1); 

$ProcessObj->Wait(INFINITE) or warn print_error();

print "END \n";

$ProcessObj->GetExitCode($ExitCode) or warn print_error();
print "...exited with $ExitCode\n";
sub print_error {
    print Win32::FormatMessage( Win32::GetLastError() );
}
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Unfortunately I get this message:

>PID: 3052
>
>Access is denied.
>
>END 
>...exited with 259
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Have you any idea why I keep getting the massage: Access is denied?

I was thinking about windows services as afoken has suggested as well. I need to start about 20000 processes in about 12 hours with about 100 types of command lines - perl scripts, BAT scripts, executables. Some of them run few seconds, some of them run few hours. Is stil this type of tasks suitable to run via Win32::Daemon?

Thanks

Tomas