This is definitely a language issue, both of our code and our database contains Chinese characters. **This is my environment: About your application's environment Ruby version 1.9.1 (i386-mingw32) RubyGems version 1.3.5 Rack version 1.0 Rails version 2.3.5 Active Record version 2.3.5 Active Resource version 2.3.5 Action Mailer version 2.3.5 Active Support version 2.3.5 Application root C:/path_to_my_root Environment development Database adapter mysql Database schema version 20100327010640 **This is my localhost;3000 after running my ruby server: ArgumentError in HomeController#construction invalid byte sequence in GBK RAILS_ROOT: C:/path_to_my_root Application Trace | Framework Trace | Full Trace C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/ template_error.rb:43:in `split' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/ template_error.rb:43:in `source_extract' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/ template_error.rb:86:in `compute_backtrace' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/ template_error.rb:11:in `initialize' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/ template.rb:212:in `new' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/ template.rb:212:in `rescue in render_template' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/ template.rb:205:in `render_template' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/ base.rb:265:in `render' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/ base.rb:352:in `_render_with_layout' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/action_view/ base.rb:262:in `render' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/base.rb:1250:in `render_for_file' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/base.rb:951:in `render' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/benchmarking.rb:51:in `block in render_with_benchmark' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/activesupport-2.3.5/lib/ active_support/core_ext/benchmark.rb:17:in `block in ms' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/1.9.1/benchmark.rb:309:in `realtime' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/activesupport-2.3.5/lib/ active_support/core_ext/benchmark.rb:17:in `ms' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/benchmarking.rb:51:in `render_with_benchmark' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/mime_responds.rb:135:in `block in custom' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/mime_responds.rb:179:in `call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/mime_responds.rb:179:in `block in respond' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/mime_responds.rb:173:in `each' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/mime_responds.rb:173:in `respond' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/mime_responds.rb:107:in `respond_to' C:/Users/Howard/Documents/local/vjoin/app/controllers/ home_controller.rb:53:in `construction' ..... C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rack-1.0.1/lib/rack/ methodoverride.rb:24:in `call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/params_parser.rb:15:in `call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/session/cookie_store.rb:93:in `call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/failsafe.rb:26:in `call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rack-1.0.1/lib/rack/lock.rb:11:in `block in call' :8:in `synchronize' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rack-1.0.1/lib/rack/lock.rb:11:in `call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/dispatcher.rb:114:in `block in call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/reloader.rb:34:in `run' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/actionpack-2.3.5/lib/ action_controller/dispatcher.rb:108:in `call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/rack/ static.rb:31:in `call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rack-1.0.1/lib/rack/urlmap.rb:46:in `block in call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rack-1.0.1/lib/rack/urlmap.rb:40:in `each' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rack-1.0.1/lib/rack/urlmap.rb:40:in `call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/rack/ log_tailer.rb:17:in `call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rack-1.0.1/lib/rack/ content_length.rb:13:in `call' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/rack-1.0.1/lib/rack/handler/ webrick.rb:50:in `service' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/1.9.1/webrick/httpserver.rb:111:in `service' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/1.9.1/webrick/httpserver.rb:70:in `run' C:/Ruby19/lib/ruby/1.9.1/webrick/server.rb:183:in `block in start_thread' Request Parameters: None Show session dump Response Headers: {"Cache-Control"=>"no-cache", "Content-Type"=>"text/html"} **What should I do? I tried to search online, didn't find much. The only thing I found was something like putting the following into application_controller: before_filter :set_charset, :set_locale def set_charset response.headers["Content-Type"] = "text/html; charset=utf-8" WIN32OLE.codepage = WIN32OLE::CP_UTF8 end but this still doesn't work. I am new to ruby on rails, so don't know much about it. Thanks for your help.