Desktop processing fails with 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte

  • Updated on Feb 3, 2025
  • Published on Jan 2, 2024
  • 1 minute(s) read
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A processing task fails and one of the following error messages are displayed:

  • ERROR: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 21: invalid continuation byte

  • Processing failed:'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xb0 in position 37: invalid start byte

This procedure refers to NavVis On-Premise Desktop Processing.

The error is caused by folders or files that contain the characters: "._"  which are generated by the MacOS during the data transfer. The SiteMaker tries to read these files, but these contain unsupported characters. Edit and remove these unsupported characters and you will be able to process the data.

If the name of the computer or any folder on the path to the license/dataset or your SiteMaker project contains any special characters (for example ""° or any non-English alphabet letter), it could cause this error message. Remove any special characters and process again.

NavVis processing software expects the data to be encoded in utf-8 format. If the extraction software uses another encoding by default, this could lead to the issue. Change the encoding type to utf-8, extract the data and process again.

This error can also occur if the Desktop Processing Software system's locale settings are in other languages, e.g., Chinese, French, etc. Change the system locale to English UTF-8, with the following commands:

  • sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8

  • sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8

You can check your local setting by executing the command in an Ubuntu terminal:

  • Local

More info can be found on our documentation: Installation prerequisites.

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