Are you running the latest version of ActiveState Perl (5.8.8.820)? Did you download the correct version (x86 vs x64)? The latest version is here:
ActiveState - ActivePerl free Perl open source binary language distribution - Dynamic Tools for Dynamic Languages
Anything interesting reported in your computer's Event Logs?
If you have found a bug in Perl, I suggest reporting it to ActiveState so that they can fix it in the next release. ActiveState's bug tracker is here:
ActiveState Bug Database - Simple Query Page