Try:

Administrator://{C} # ppm search MinGW
Downloading ActiveState Package Repository packlist...done
Updating ActiveState Package Repository database...done
1: MinGW
   Utility to manage software builds
   Version: 5.1.4.1
   Author: MinGW Team (http://mingw.org)>
   Require: dmake
   Repo: ActiveState Package Repository
   CPAN: http://search.cpan.org/dist/MinGW-5.1.4.1/

Administrator://{C} #
[download]

The 'search' feature will search your set repositories for it. Perhaps you don't have a repository with MinGW available?

Alternatively, you could download http://www.mingw.org by itself and follow installation instructions, making sure you put it in your path. I have Bloodshed Dev-C++ (which doesn't seem to be available anymore at www.bloodshed.net) installed - which uses the MinGW gcc/g++ compilers. It's in my path and Perl uses it just fine with 'dmake' (ppm install dmake).

thanks for the answers. I installed MinGW by itself and changed my system path to find it.

Which repositories does ppm have configured? I'd imagine you'd need to be using the ActiveState PPM repository to get this.