all works fine as a .pl

Prove it.

so error checking has nothing to do with this

Sure it does.

my apologies yes error checking on path would help the problem is after compiling finding the current user is failing

my $olduserid = qx{whoami};
chomp $olduserid;
my ($userid) = $olduserid =~ /.*\\(\w+)/;

my $path = "C:/Users/$userid/Desktop/";

open to recommendations to determine current user bc after compiling my code is failing on path.

my apologies yes error checking on path would help the problem is after compiling finding the current user is failing

So why not check for errors after qx{}?

But you should use %ENV or File::HomeDir->my_desktop