No, that doesn't sound normal. But fortunately, you have control over which repositories PPM searches. It's controlled with the 'repository' command, within the PPM shell. There is documentation on your system (assuming you installed ActivePerl correctly) in HTML format that describes how to use PPM. I don't know what path you've got things installed on, but on my WinXP system, it's here: file:///C:/Perl/html/index.html

Note: That URL is for a file local on my system. You should have something similar on yours if you installed AcivePerl correctly. YMMV.

The key is simply to instruct PPM which rep's you wish to utilize, and in which order they should be searched.