figures as soon as I give up hope, I find a way to make it work. This line will open the Database with a path instead of from the DSN ->

$dbh = DBI->connect('dbi:ODBC:driver=microsoft access driver (*.mdb);dbq=C:\Windows\system32\cmsdb.mdb');

Thanks for the ENV trick, I didn't realize you could get to the environment variables that easily :D. Man, I love perl.