Our Server had a major https problem and the host informed us that the Apache server was

"httpd died and we couldn't get it back up so we had to do a clean install of it. Everything back to normal now"

After this incident some of my clients CGI/Perl scripts are not working. When they to access a cgi script the browser is trying to download the file, or some browsers are showing the script in text format.

Any help please?

sounds like the host forgot to add handler...

try using htaccess to add handler if you cant get the host to re-add the mime type
\

AddType application/x-cgi cgi pl

Options Includes ExecCGI
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php4 .php3 .phtml
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

etc, etc, etc ....

I was thinking same thing, .htaccess should have stuff like that in there depending on your needs ...

Something like this in .htaccess within the top level www directory for the client

Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script .pl

Note I am assuming that your perl scripts are all tagged with pl and not just living with in cgi-bin.

Probably this was set up in the <VirtualHost ..> entry for the client before and this got wiped out by the reinstall. Speaking of reinstall... they should have backed httpd.conf up!