I installed the portable version in a non-standard place of T:\hyd\src\strawberry.5.38 under the understanding that I could install Perl anywhere these days

Yes - that's usually not a problem.
I suspect that the main problem is that the "T:drive is a share of \\k030\hydprime\cnd".
I've no experience of that hoop, nor of how to jump through it ;-)

Cheers,
Rob