not a valid win32 application

[John W. Burns]

For some inexplicable reason (at least to me) my windows perl application
has ceased to load.
When I call perl\bin\perl.exe I receive the message "not a valid win32
application." OS is Windows XP.
I have never had this problem in the past. I re-installed Perl from Active
State and still receive the same
error message. Have searched Active State, CPAN, Monks, Microsoft, etc for
a fix and can't find one.
Any ideas on how to solve this problem? Many thanks.
JWB

 

[John Bokma]

For some inexplicable reason (at least to me) my windows perl
application has ceased to load.
When I call perl\bin\perl.exe I receive the message "not a valid win32
application." OS is Windows XP.
I have never had this problem in the past. I re-installed Perl from
Active State and still receive the same

Did you backup & delete the entire C:\Perl folder before you did this?

error message. Have searched Active State, CPAN, Monks, Microsoft,
etc for a fix and can't find one.
Any ideas on how to solve this problem? Many thanks.

C:\Perl\bin>md5sum *.exe
4805e2457c91d9c01fff5bc8607c8f84 *a2p.exe
3bec3e4baa0fca7b17056ea5fa2f85f8 *perl.exe
3bec3e4baa0fca7b17056ea5fa2f85f8 *perl5.8.7.exe
cf62af3e44035c7316a3d996d6069b79 *perlglob.exe
6fafdb95ea836b3262e3f5cbb799b4c2 *wperl.exe

perl -v gives:

This is perl, v5.8.7 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
(with 14 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)

Copyright 1987-2005, Larry Wall

Binary build 815 [211909] provided by ActiveState
http://www.ActiveState.com
....

 

[Henry Law]

For some inexplicable reason (at least to me) my windows perl application
has ceased to load.
When I call perl\bin\perl.exe I receive the message "not a valid win32
application." OS is Windows XP.
I have never had this problem in the past. I re-installed Perl from Active
State and still receive the same
error message.

Hmm; sounds serious. My first thought would have been to re-install but
you've done that. Presumably you can't run "perl -v" to compare against
this, but in case it helps my Perl is

This is perl, v5.8.7 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread
(with 7 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)

Copyright 1987-2005, Larry Wall

Binary build 813 [148120] provided by ActiveState http://www.ActiveState.com
ActiveState is a division of Sophos.
Built Jun 6 2005 13:36:37

And the module itself is reported by XP as 5.8.7.813, size 45,135 bytes,
dated 06/06/2005 12:37.

Any chance of some malware futzing with Windows XP itself? Trojans and
rootkits routinely try to mask or kill other processes - perhaps one
targets perl. Anti-virus, anti-spyware up to date?

What happens when you launch a ".pl" file from Windows Explorer? Should
be the same thing but can you confirm?

 

[John W. Burns]

For some inexplicable reason (at least to me) my windows perl application
has ceased to load.
When I call perl\bin\perl.exe I receive the message "not a valid win32
application." OS is Windows XP.
I have never had this problem in the past. I re-installed Perl from Active
State and still receive the same
error message. Have searched Active State, CPAN, Monks, Microsoft, etc for
a fix and can't find one.
Any ideas on how to solve this problem? Many thanks.
JWB

Was able to resolve "not a valid win32" problem with Active State perl
installation.
Checked per suggestions I received form list and re-ran virus and spyware,
plus Symantec
Systems Works to diagnose winddows bugs, although they all indicated none
found..
Uninstalled perl for second time, but had to use MoveOnBoot to delete some
Active State files
that received "access denied message" and couldn't delete through normal
steps. After full
deletion re-installed Active State Perl and the "not a valid win32 problem
went away.
Active State's Perl application is up and running again.
Thanks for the suggestions on how to fix this problem.
JWB