huh. I get same error, on Windows Vista, when Help->Hotkeys… and Hel->Common IOR Values (line 224). I do not have aero active (Vista Classic instead) and I have a great graphics card, up to date drivers. bug confirmed. Editing the file in Python indicates the issue is with the e with the accent, and some German letter in line 80ish. o with umlaut i think it is called. The good news is that killing those two lines the script runs fine.
Something changed in Python where you need to indicate that a file contains iso extended character set?