Error when using pyinstaller: UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xff

I found an answer on another forum. I change the line number 369 in the Python\Lib\site-packages\Pyinstaller\compat.py file:

out = out.decode(encoding)

to

out = out.decode(encoding, errors='ignore')

or

out = out.decode(encoding, "replace")

Now I can compile my script without any issue. I still don't know why my issue happened in the first place but at least that compiles now.

The answer still works 2 years later BUT the line changed from 368 to 428.

In the newest version (3.5) , the line moved slightly to 427.

The best thing to do is to search for

out = out.decode(encoding)

and replace it with

out = out.decode(encoding, "replace")

I don't understand why they do not fix this annoying problem!