1.8 data file crashes on 2.2.6

[knndy5 at fuse.net]

I've recently downloaded 2.2.6 for windows and are running it on W2K. When trying to open the 1.8 data file from my dying Suse machine gnucash crashes. I located a trace file that coincides with when it crashed.

*   WARN <qof.engine> [guid_init()] only got 1922 bytes.
The identifiers might not be very random.
*   WARN <gnc.app-util> Could not spawn perl: Failed to execute child process (No such file or directory)

Does gnucash require perl? 

Thanx
Tim