I followed the advice of peppiv and low and behold the connect
work but the script then fell over on the $sth->execute()
line below

my $query = qq(select distinct roomid, name from rooms order by roomid
+);
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($query) or die qq(Failed to prepare query: $db
+h->errstr)
;
my $ret = $sth->execute() or die qq(Failed to execute query: $dbh->err
+str);
my @row = $sth->fetchrow_array() or die qq(Failed to fetch data: $dbh-
+>errstr);
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with the following error

DBD::ODBC::st execute failed: [Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver
+] Not a valid file name. (SQL-S1000)(DBD: st_execute/SQLExecute err=-
+1) at d:/apps/apache/cgi-bin/timetable.pl line 72.
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I then removed the username from the connect statement and
the connect worked but the execute still failed
What is going on?