Actually, the situation you describe would cause attempting to load the "loadable object" to fail, but wouldn't prevent the "loadable object" from being found.

OK I don't feel so bad anymore.
First thanks to all of the valuable input. I have subsequently downloaded and installed Active Package Manager - what an incredible tool! Makes life with Perl easy.

But... I tried to install the wbmail-gmail package and got: Synchronizing Database ... DONE
Mail-Webmail-Gmail marked for install

ERROR: Can't find any package that provide Crypt-SSLeay for Mail-Webmail-Gmail


Any suggestions would be most welcome!

Within ppm4 (the gui interface), you can add repositories by selecting Edit -> Preferences -> Repositories, and then adding the corresponding location (and a name you want to remember it by). A couple of ones you might want to add that have some popular packages not present in ActiveState's (extensive) repository are http://www.bribes.org/perl/ppm and http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms/. The Crypt-SSLeay package is in the uwinnipeg repository, but this contains a post-install script to download and install the necessary openssl dlls, and the current ppm4 gui doesn't handle post-install scripts. What you can do is add these respositories, quit the gui, and then run

 C:\> ppm install Crypt-SSLeay
[download]

from a console window.