Hi silarkhar, thanks for letting us know about your issue.
I think I know why this might be. Have you, by any chance, installed ERA in a directory that contains "non-standard" characters? (á, ö, ç, etc...)
I don't think the situation is related to Windows 8 at all, but Windows in general.
Although I have never seen this happen up to know, I tried renaming my ERA directory to ERá and could reproduce the issue.
The same happens if I install to "C:\Stuffö\ERA\".
Let me know if this helps, I'll see if there is a way for future versions to allow any kind of directory names.
Also, thanks Justin and markc for your assistance, it is great to see the other users stepping up to offer ideas!