Проблема с кодировкой python: UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe0 in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)

Если у вас Traceback показывает следующую информацию:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\django\core\servers\basehttp.py", line 280, in run
    self.result = application(self.environ, self.start_response)
  File "C:\Python27\lib\site-packages\django\core\servers\basehttp.py", line 709, in __call__
    mime_type = mimetypes.guess_type(file_path)[0]
  File "C:\Python27\lib\mimetypes.py", line 295, in guess_type
    init()
  File "C:\Python27\lib\mimetypes.py", line 356, in init
    db.read_windows_registry()
  File "C:\Python27\lib\mimetypes.py", line 261, in read_windows_registry
    for ctype in enum_types(mimedb):
  File "C:\Python27\lib\mimetypes.py", line 251, in enum_types
    ctype = ctype.encode(default_encoding) # omit in 3.x!
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe0 in position 0: ordinal not in range(128)

То решением может служить подмена функции read_windows_registry(self, strict=True) в файле C:\Python27\Lib\mimetypes.py

def read_windows_registry(self, strict=True):
        """
        Load the MIME types database from Windows registry.

        If strict is true, information will be added to
        list of standard types, else to the list of non-standard
        types.
        """

        # Windows only
        if not _winreg:
            return

        def enum_types(mimedb):
            i = 0
            while True:
                try:
                    ctype = _winreg.EnumKey(mimedb, i)
                except EnvironmentError:
                    break
                try:
                    ctype = ctype.encode(default_encoding) # omit in 3.x!
                except UnicodeError:
                    pass
                else:
                    yield ctype
                i += 1

        default_encoding = sys.getdefaultencoding()
        with _winreg.OpenKey(_winreg.HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT,
                             r'MIME\Database\Content Type') as mimedb:
            for ctype in enum_types(mimedb):
                try:
                    with _winreg.OpenKey(mimedb, ctype) as key:
                        suffix, datatype = _winreg.QueryValueEx(key,
                                                                'Extension')
                except EnvironmentError:
                    continue
                if datatype != _winreg.REG_SZ:
                    continue
                try:
                    suffix = suffix.encode(default_encoding) # omit in 3.x!
                except UnicodeError:
                    continue
                self.add_type(ctype, suffix, strict)

Решение взято отсюда: http://softwaremaniacs.org/forum/django/31707/