Intruigingly I have ActiveState perl 5.005_03 at work - and PPM found GD and installed it no worries and I have made my first JPGs and PNGs (yay) - I appear to have all DLLs.

However at home I have ActivePerl 5.8 or something to do with 8 (I dont remember but its a rather new installation - didnt realise my work veriosn was so old!) and PPM on that can see a couple of GD-barcode modules and thats it.. no specific GD itself.

I will try ALL of the wonderful suggestions above..thanks heaps Monks!

GD is quite fun.. next Ill have a look at Tk!