UnicodeDecodeError when calling AWS CLI

Question

I just installed the AWS CLI following this installation guide for Windows: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/installing.html#install-msi-on-windows

However, when I execute aws --version in my cli the following error is thrown:

C:\Users\René Winkler>aws --version
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "aws", line 27, in <module>
File "aws", line 23, in main
File "awscli\clidriver.pyc", line 49, in main
File "awscli\clidriver.pyc", line 57, in create_clidriver
File "botocore\session.pyc", line 368, in full_config
File "botocore\configloader.pyc", line 105, in load_config
File "botocore\configloader.pyc", line 126, in raw_config_parse
File "botocore\exceptions.pyc", line 27, in __init__
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe9 in position 12:   ordinal not in range(128)

What could be the cause of this problem?

Same problem. I also have an accented character in my username, thank you, Windows. — Gábor Nagy

René Winkler René Winkler · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-20T09:56:34

It seemed to be an encoding problem with my windows user name as it contains "é". Finally, I uninstalled AWSCli, then created a second windows user account named "aws" and installed AWSCli under this account. In my main account, when I type in runas /user:*computer_name*\aws cmdin the cmd, it opens a second cmd which runs under the aws account. You can create an alias for this command by doskey awscli=runas /user:*computer_name*\aws cmd. In this manner, I'm able to use AWSCli under my main account.

UnicodeDecodeError when calling AWS CLI

2 Answers