How to run minted package in TeXnicCenter using MiKTeX

I am working with LaTeX on Vista using TeXnicCenter 2.0 Alpha 3 (build 1118) having installed MiKTeX 2.8. I want to use code highlighting for Objective-C and read here that the minted package is great. I installed Python 2.7 and pygmentize as told in the minted documentation. I also set the compiler option -shell-escape in TeXnicCenter. The compiler finds the pygmentize script but the following error occurs.

File "C:\Python27\Scripts\pygmentize.exe", line 1 SyntaxError: Non-ASCII character '\x90' in file C:\Python27\Scripts\pygmentize.exe on line 1, but no encoding declared; see http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0263.html for details! LaTeX Error: File `Test.out.pyg' not found. Type X to quit or to proceed, or enter new name. (Default extension: out.pyg) Enter file name: ! Emergency stop.

I cannot figure out how to fix the problem. I tried saving the tex file as ANSI or UTF-8. The only additions I made to the tex file are the package include

\usepackage{minted}

and this simple example from the minted documentation.

\mint{python}|import this|

The minted documentation is outdated: newer versions of Pygments apparently include a Windows executable pygmentize.exe (unfortunately, their Trac is currently offline so I can’t look up the relevant revision which changed that).

This means that the fix mentioned in the documentation should be redundant. Therefore, try the following steps:

1. Remove the pygmentize.cmd script entirely (best not delete it yet – just rename it). Try if minted now works.

2. If that doesn’s work, put the following into the pygmentize.cmd:

   @echo off
   set PYTHONPATH=C:\Python27
   %PYTHONPATH%\Scripts\pygmentize.exe %*
   

   i.e. don’t invoke the *.exe file via the Python interpreter.

Unfortunately, I can’t test this now since I don’t have Windows here. But one of the options should work.