PERLscienceman, thanks for your reply.

When I first installed ActivePerl 5.8.4.810, I did install it over my old 5.8.3.809. When I found ppm was no longer working, I thought this might have been part of the problem. Since then, I have uninstalled both, deleted all perl folders, and reinstalled 5.8.4.810. As I said, I have uninstalled and re-installed many times at this point. I even tried installing 5.8.3.809 again, but there was no change. Just today, after uninstalling again, I did a full system search for "perl" and deleted everything that looked like it could possibly have something to do with ActivePerl. I then installed again, and still there was no change.

Since I made my first post, I have found some other peculiar things. When trying to use LWP::Simple, if I use the 'get($url);' function, the script will hang until I ctrl-C it, just like with ppm. The getprint() function behaves exactly as it should, but, looking at the source, it doesn't seem to work the same way as get() does (no *Socket* AFAICT). I also had the same thing happen with one of the LWP test scripts -- it never failed, it just sat there until I killed it.

I think I may have found the common thread in all of these. It seems that the things that display this problem all involve 'Socket' or 'IO::Socket' or some sort of socket. I don't know much about sockets, but I did track down the point where LWP::Simple hangs, and it is right where it tries to print to the IO::Socket::INET object at line 169. A warn statement added right before the print gets issued, but one right after does not. So it appears the real issue here may be a socket problem. Unfortunately I know nothing about sockets. Anybody have any advice on this issue? I guess I'll have to start reading up on sockets...

Update: I also just managed to track down the point where PPM hangs during a query to line 272 of PPM::Installer, where it tries to print to a socket.