Sounds like we've got different experiences with ActivePerl.

From my experience, I've always have seen ActiveState's installer add the perl.exe location into the PATH environment variable. In fact, I've gotten into the bad habit of just typing script.pl instead of perl script.pl to run my scripts since the installer also sets up some file assocations.

Also, I've mainly run PPM in the GUI mode. After installing MinGW and dmake using PPM, I'm able to pull up a command prompt and run cpan install commands with no extra work needed. The combination of MinGW and dmake has allowed me to install modules directly from CPAN that require compilation, such PAR::Packer.

So my experience is that getting ActivePerl to the point of installing CPAN modules is a very simple one time process.

Of course, syphilis pointed out that I did overlook the fact that OP was using 64-bit ActivePerl. It's been a while since I've tried the 64-bit version, but I do remember there was some issues/challenges to getting a compiler setup for it to install CPAN modules requiring compilation.