Unable to load Strawberry perl shell on windows 7

[perl_omens]

Dear All,

Greetings. I use strawberry perl on windows 7. I use command "perl-MCPAN -e shell" to install perl modules from CPAN. When I was installing Padre (Perl IDE) by issuing command

cpan> install Padre

and the process was in the middle then there was power trip due to which my PC rebooted. Now whenever I try to load perl shell (perl -MCPAN -e shell) on perl cmmand line (DOS) it gives following fatal error:

**************************************************************

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:\>perl -MCPAN -e shell
Argument "\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0" isn't numeric 
+in numeric
 eq (==) at C:/strawberry/perl/lib/CPAN.pm line 728.

There seems to be running another CPAN process (pid                   
+    ).  Co
ntacting...
Can't kill a non-numeric process ID at C:/strawberry/perl/lib/CPAN.pm 
+line 733.

**************************************************************

I rebooted my PC but in vain. Please suggest problem resolution and throw some pointers.

Regards,

perl_omens

[snoopy]

CPAN takes out a lock to make sure that it is only running once.

The lock file normally contains a PID of the other CPAN process. It seems that the content of this file has become corrupted and contains null characters. CPAN is then choking when it tries to kill a non-numeric PID.

The simple solution is hopefully to remove the ".lock" file before running CPAN.

Do the following to find the path to CPAN home.

     perl -MCPAN::Config -e "print $CPAN::Config->{cpan_home}"

Then look for and remove the file named .lock under that path.

[dasgar]

My guess is that some files were corrupted during the power loss. My first thought on recovery would be to revert to a backup of the OS (or filesystem) if you have one.

My second thought would be to reinstall Strawberry Perl as well as any other modules that were installed.