Many thanks for the prompt responses.
I have been down the road of trying to use Net::SSH::Expect but as you've rightly said, it would not work on a windows machine.
The other modules I looked at require some sort of pty, which windows does not support. Net::SSH2 does not work due to the requirement to have libssh2 on the machine.
I will try using cygwin again. Had problems with the installation. Will report back if i could get cygwin working. Otherwise the quest continues