Redirecting Output Problem When Using Volatility

The Problem

If you are using Volatility3 and trying to output the results into a file by using operators such as “>” or pipe “|” to do further actions, you may face the problem I faced.

On Windows, it seems that the console does not support the full Unicode character set, so when redirecting the output, the console will be unable to handle the Unicode output correctly and print out the below error message or a similar one:
“UnicodeEncodeError: ‘charmap’ codec can’t encode characters in position {15-20}: character maps to <undefined>” .

Testing Variables

Windows: 8.1

Python: 3.8.8

The Solution

I tried changing the active console code page to UTF-8 encoding by writing in cmd.exe:

chcp 65001

but it did not work. Then I wrote in the Command Prompt to change the Python encoding to UTF-8:

set PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8
set PYTHONLEGACYWINDOWSSTDIO=utf-8

It worked! I hope it will solve your problem too!

The Preferred Method to Deal with Such Problems

• It is always preferred to run Volatility on Linux environments instead of Windows

Conclusion

We talked about the problem I faced on Windows when using Volatility to redirect output, the solution and the preferred method to deal with it.