I have checked out a bunch of things but none seem straight forward

What bunch?

use Proc::Background

#!/usr/bin/perl --
use strict; use warnings;
use Proc::Background;

my @commands = (
    [ 'echo', 'arg','arg', ] ,
    [ 'perl', '-le',' print 1; sleep 1; warn 2; sleep 1; die 3;' ],
);

my @procs = map {  Proc::Background->new(@$_); } @commands;

$_->wait for @procs;

system 'echo', 'nowTheyAreAllDead.pl', '--pidsAndExitStatus', map { $_
+->pid, $_->wait } @procs;
__END__
arg arg
1
2 at -e line 1.
3 at -e line 1.
nowTheyAreAllDead.pl --pidsAndExitStatus 2956 0 2120 65280
[download]

Since you want 4 processes to finish before you begin the 5th, you could run 4 child processes and tell the parent process to wait ( halt execution ) until all those return. The main problem I could see running into which I have in the past is saving the data from those processes in variables you associate with the parent process. But this is one way to do it, though they won't really be seperate "scripts" in the file-sense.

for(0..4){
print "starting $_\n";
system("start", "perl.exe",  '-e',  'print qq!hello world\n!;sleep 1;'
+);
print "end of starting $_\n";
}
[download]

Dont use perl, use the Windows Shell. ..... But you won't know when the childs are done.

I would stick with perl, you can know when childs are done.