Your basic alternative to using PPM is to download the tarball, extract it, and use a
make program (like nmake) to build and install the module. See
A Guide to Installing Modules.
On the whole, it's probably easier to figure out why you can't get your PPM to work the way you want it to.
holli has just written an
excellent tutorial on using ActiveState's PPM tool.
Just looking at the info you provided, I have two comments:
- I believe the command line arguments you are supplying are invalid. The proper form is ppm install $my-module-name, not ppm install $url-for-module.
I could be wrong on that though (Update: [id://baztastic] points out that I am wrong).
- Also, the error shows a typo for the URL to ActiveState's repository ("ppm.ActiveStae.com"). You probably want to fix that. Again, see A guide to installing modules for Win32 for instructions on adding, deleting or modifying repositories.
Hope this helps.