Perl56.dll

5.6.dll

Unable To Locate Component This application has failed to start because Perl56.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem.

Well that was a fun error. I started playing with XML::Simple and it ends up that my old Perl 5.6 would error out when running a simple script such as the following. Pretty bad.

    use XML::Simple;
    use Data::Dumper;
   
    # read XML file
    $data = XMLin("test.xml");

    # print output
    print Dumper($data)

5.8 over 5.6

Apparently you can't install things this way. Or rather you can, but who wants to manage paths? Not I.

For the record, this is using ActivePerl from ActiveState.

• Uninstalled 5.6
• Installed 5.8
• Ran the same script.

Same error!

Rename Perl

So I looked around on the web for a bit and found a bunch of answers that really didn't fit. Figured I'd try something else.

• Renamed c:\perl to c:\perl_
• Installed ActivePerl-5.8.8.820-MSWin32-x86-274739.msi

• Ran the same script

New error!!!

Actually, this is a good thing. Since I renamed my old install, all of the installed modules were also moved. So now I'm faced with importing everything from the old install (and potentially overwriting new modules from 5.8) or simply just fire up PPM and start downloading new modules.

I opted for PPM and, well, I hadn't read about the most recent PPM changes. What a nice surprise it was to pop up open the gui and look at All Packages. Not that it's really any easier in the long run as becoming proficient at 'old school PPM' wasn't a hard task as long as 's xml' and 'i 2' were there, but what a change!

Anyway, things are working again.

Now I guess I'll finally be dumping my perl2exe license and moving on to using the Perl Archive Toolkit for Win32 apps like I did at work.