so close to being done - quests don't work

[AdmiralNaismith]

I am so close to being done I can taste it. I have EqEmu up and running on a Windows 7 64 bit system, lan connections work using SoD/Underfoot, external connections work using SoD/Underfoot and Windows Vista.

Quests don't work, and NPCs don't respond to hails.

Obviously the culprit is Perl. I get no error messages on server startup. When I log into PoK or TutorialB the logs show:

[11.12. - 09:11:09] WARNING: error compiling quest file quests/poknowledge/Drelynn_Beaufax.pl: Perl runtime error: Undefined subroutine &main::eval_file called.
(reverting to default questfile)
[11.12. - 09:11:09] WARNING: error compiling quest file quests/poknowledge/Grand_Librarian_Maelin.pl: Perl runtime error: Undefined subroutine &main::eval_file called.
(reverting to default questfile)
[11.12. - 09:11:09] WARNING: error compiling quest file quests/poknowledge/Tratlan_Jowyr.pl: Perl runtime error: Undefined subroutine &main::eval_file called.
(reverting to default questfile)
[11.12. - 09:11:09] WARNING: error compiling quest file quests/poknowledge/Onirelin_Gali.pl: Perl runtime error: Undefined subroutine &main::eval_file called.
(reverting to default questfile)
[11.12. - 09:11:09] WARNING: error compiling quest file quests/poknowledge/Phantasmist_Salkith.pl: Perl runtime error: Undefined subroutine &main::eval_file called.

Here's what I've tried:

- ActivePerl 5.10 and 5.12 (uninstall/reboot between versions)
- installed DBI, DBD-mysql and io-stringy using PPM
- using latest version of quests from SVN
- using latest version of maps from SVN
- plugins are in the eqemu\plugins directory
- installed and registered perl58.dll in the EqEmu folder (just in case!)
- verified that my windows/system32 folder didn't have any perl dll files
- I have administrator privileges on my user account

After extensive google searches I'm running out of ideas. Any thoughts?