Actually, I said "... using pp quite happily ...". However, I am generally pleased with Strawberry Perl.

I've found most modules install using the CPAN modules but occasionally some don't. And, yes, force install doesn't always help. There is actually a stronger version of that (fforce) but there are cases where that's not the answer either.

When the CPAN module hasn't been able to install a module, I revert to the commandline. The usual incantation is

perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
[download]

but do check the README and INSTALL files for variations, dependencies or additional tasks that may need to be run.

One point of failure is often make test. There are occasions where the module has built without any problem and will install and run OK but, for whatever reason, one or more tests fail. While I'm not advocating that you skip the tests as a general rule, you can try the make install even if make test failed. I would recommend looking at the test output: the reason for failure may be obvious, e.g. you don't have some server running, your internet access is currently down, and so on.

With regard to DBD::Mysql, I can't provide any advice from (recent) personal experience - I may have installed that module 10 years ago. What I do recall from installing DBD::* modules generally is that you need to read the README and INSTALL documents very closely.