The error appears to be caused by the computer setup to use a non-European language. If you open the Regional and language options in control panel and set your computer to use English (or a language such as French, Spanish, Italian) (you may have to add a language) on the advanced panel choose the same language as is shown on the other language panel (you will need your installation CD for Windows). Also, you can change your Windows settings back to how they used to be before the game was installed. If you still experience problems try clicking codepage 28605 box and enable ISO-8859-15 (latin) encoding and try to install Stronghold 2 again.