It sounds like your computer needs to be set for English:
From your Control Panel (Start > Settings > Control Panel) run Regional and Language Options. In BOTH the Regional Options tab, and the Advanced tab, make sure the language setting is English.

If that doesn't work, also see if you can find anything about Unicode in Regional Settings, and set the Unicode for Single-Byte. It might also help in the Advanced tab, to select at least one Code Conversion Table for "US-ASCII" and "IBM-EBCDIC".

Good luck, and enjoy. :)