ppm trouble:'no suitable installation target'

[NetWallah]

I'm hoping this re-post from an older thread with a more apt 'subject' will get a response. crazyinsomniac suggested a corrupt ppm.xml in this response, but the command to fix it did not work :

G:\Perl\site\lib>ppm genconfig > ppm.xml
Unknown or ambiguous command 'genconfig'; type 'help' for commands.

The ppm.xml file did not exist(still doesn't), so I tried to create it in place. Anyway, there is no "genconfig" command documented in the help.
Searching Activestate's bug list revealed nothing.
In case it helps - here are some details of my ppm:

G:\Perl\site\lib>ppm
PPM - Programmer's Package Manager version 3.1.
Copyright (c) 2001 ActiveState SRL. All Rights Reserved.

Entering interactive shell. Using Term::ReadLine::Stub as readline lib
+rary.

Type 'help' to get started.

ppm:AvtivePerl5> targ desc
Describing target 1 (AvtivePerl58):
        Path: G:\Perl\site\lib\ppm-conf\ppminst.bat
        Port: 14533
        Type: Local
ARCHITECTURE: MSWin32-x86-multi-thread-5.8
         CPU: x86
    LANGUAGE: Perl
     OSVALUE: MSWin32
   OSVERSION: 4,0,0,0
    PERLCORE: 5.8.0
 TARGET_TYPE: perl
     VERSION: 3.05
 Rebuildhtml:
        Root: G:\Perl\
     Tempdir:

Here is the error that I get, no matter what I try to install

ppm:AvtivePerl5> install dbi
Error: no suitable installation target found for package dbi.

I get the same error no matter what I try to install.