If you're having problems installing Win32::Exe on Activestate via PPM, I would postulate that your install is broken. Weather this is the fault of ActiveState or something on your machine is still to be determined.

Also, 64B Activestate perl is... well, last time I messed with it "goofy" would be a generous description. Getting the compiler and such to work with it was beyond my patience to sort out. I've resigned to use 32B ActiveState until I make the jump to 5.20, at which point I'll probably switch to Strawberry. 32B ActiveState perl has given me no trouble generating packaged executeables once I sorted out installing Par::Packer, which I still think required some hoop-jumping as I recall. This was a couple of years ago though, as I updated to 5.16 shortly after it came out, and haven't moved since.

I say this as someone who has used ActiveState for the past 5 years or so. While I freely admit that more may have considerably more time with it, I like to think I'm not speaking from a place of ignorance.