FreePascal - FindFirst and I/O Handles Used

I'm looping through several text files in a cgi-bin program of mine to 
accumulate sales data using FreePascal version 2.0.4.

To see if a file exists, I use FindFirst along with the DosError 
variable.  My cgi-bin crashes (with a 1450 error says the Apache error 
log) when looping through a large number of files, but not when looping 
through a small number of files.

I became suspicious of the FindFirst procedure in FreePascal and wrote a 
test program.

If I open Task Manager and look at the number of I/O handles in use 
while the program executes (under the Performance tab), the number grows 
until the program ends, but only if the file exists.  If the file does 
not exist, a number of handles does not grow large (interesting).

Is this a compiler bug?  Configuration bug? HW bug?  Or how can I free a 
handle that FindFirst apparantly uses?  Workarounds?

Thanks.

Jim
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PROGRAM t2;

USES dos;

VAR
   i : longint;
   DirInfo : searchRec;

BEGIN {t2}
   FOR i:=1 to 500000 DO
     BEGIN
       findFirst('\VER.TXT',anyfile,dirinfo);
{file must exist - missing files do not show the problem}
       IF (i mod 1000)=0 THEN
         writeln(i);
     END; {endfor}

END. {t2}