sub win32_exit
{
  my ($exitcode) = @_;
  my $this_process;

  # get Win32 native handle to the current process
  Win32::Process::Open( $this_process, $$, 0 ) || die;

  # "kill" on Windows simply means
  # "force the process to exit with that exitcode"
  $this_process->Kill( $exitcode );

  # we killed ourselves, should never get here
  die "Thou shalt never see this!";
}