PAR obviously has a problem at 0.85 because according to this: module status report from ActiveState it will not build cleanly under their automated system.

As for Win32::GUI - this has long been a thorny one. The developer maintains his own PPM respository, but even that only has version 0.502! The latest version can be downloaded from the author or it is available from sourceforge as well. In this case the version on CPAN is vastly older than that on ActiveState. But if the developer doesn't release to CPAN then what are ActiveState to do? Go trolling all around the Internet to find the stuff?

I agree that it is difficult maintaining a Win32 Perl installation, sometimes ya just gotta do some digging yourself.

jdtoronto