latexdiff problem in MikTex 2.8 after update: “Perl script not found” [closed]

Question

Some days ago, I've updated my Miktex 2.8 installation (on Windows 7). However, since doing that I have problems with latexdiff (it did work before). When I run it, I get:

latexdiff: the Perl script could not be found
latexdiff: Data: latexdiff

So, it seems the latexdiff.exe (there is one under C:\Program Files (86)\MikTeX 2.8\miktex\bin\latexdiff.exe, and another one under C:\Users\myname\AppData\Roaming\MikTeX\2.8\miktex\bin\latexdiff.exe) doesn't find the actual Perl script. There are some Perl files under scripts\latexdiff.

Things I've done/checked:

• I first thought it was a Perl problem, but the perl interpreter is still working and available at the command line
  If I do perl "C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.8\scripts\latexdiff\latexdiff -h the script works fine.

• I've already removed and reinstalled the latexdiff package using both the MikTex Package Maintenance and Package Maintenance (Admin), but that didn't help.

• It doesn't seem to be an admin/regular user issue, as calling either of the two latexdiff.exe files explicitly (the global one, or the user one) gives the same problem.

• Other scripts like texdiff and pdfcrop which also use a similar perl-script-redirection setup still can be called without problems.

• the miktex\config\scripts.ini file seems to refer to the correct path, as it has the line latexdiff=scripts/latexdiff/latexdiff.
  Although I noticed that the latexdiff lines are the one of only a few ones that do NOT end with .pl (arlatex, bundledoc, latexpand, latexrevise, makeglossaries, pkfix-helper, urlbst where to other ones without .pl extension)

• I've checked the miktex\config\update-<date>.log files and in the most recent one there is no entry of latexdiff in the "Making Per links..." part, wheres in older log files, there was.

I don't want to re-install MikTex to fix this problem.

As a workaround for now, I have sort-of created a wrapper script that calls perl "C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.8\scripts\latexdiff\latexdiff, instead of just latexdiff.exe, with whatever options I append.

Some more background: The reason I updated MikTeX some days ago was because I was having a compile problem when using pdftex. I got the error I can't find file 'dehypht-x-2009-06-19.tex'. I tried solving this by updating MikTeX. Didn't help. Was able to resolve it by opening the MikTex Settings program (Windows Start Menu > MikTex > Maintenance > Settings), and deselecting the relevant German language under the Language tab. Don't know if this is relevant or not.