I get a similar result with ActivePerl804 on Win98.

However, I also see the same problem with ActivePerl802 if I use PPM3.

I diffed the Perl files in /bin and I see that the PPM batch file has been fixed in 804 so that it runs PPM3 as the default. I think that this didn't happen previously due to the wrong type of backslashes which caused PPM to default to PPM2 instead.

So perhaps the difference that you are seeing is a difference between PPM2 and PPM3.

What happens if you try an installation with PPM2?

Of course, this doesn't explain why the PPM3 installation fails.

--
John.