When starting python console application under windows,
output of unicode strings to console fails because of
ansi encoding. I found that in file
Python-2.4.2/Python/sysmodule, _PySys_Init functions,
setting encoding on stderr was forgotten:

#ifdef MS_WINDOWS
	if(isatty(_fileno(stdin))){
		sprintf(buf, "cp%d", GetConsoleCP());
		if (!PyFile_SetEncoding(sysin, buf))
			return NULL;
	}
	if(isatty(_fileno(stdout))) {
		sprintf(buf, "cp%d", GetConsoleOutputCP());
		if (!PyFile_SetEncoding(sysout, buf))
			return NULL;
	}
#endif

I think the following lines should be added:

	if(isatty(_fileno(stderr))) {
		sprintf(buf, "cp%d", GetConsoleOutputCP());
		if (!PyFile_SetEncoding(syserr, buf))
			return NULL;
	}

Otherwise it's inconsistant, as if we set it to sysout,
why not on syserr? And, for example, this code will not
work properly:

    #!/usr/bin/env python
    # -*- encoding: mbcs -*-
    import sys
    reload(sys) # bring setdefaultencoding back!
    sys.setdefaultencoding("mbcs")
    sys.stderr.write(u"<native text>\n")

Instead of native text garbage will be printed (if you
change it to sys.stdout, proper text displayed), and
there is no way I know to properly determine and set
encoding just for stderr (file.encoding is read-only,
after all).

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Ooops, sorry, in the example it should be:

print >>sys.stderr, u"<native text>"

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user_id=21627

Thanks for the report. This is now fixed in #43581.