[postgis-users] "Query failed: ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding"

[yoda2nd]

Hello,

I have been beating my head on the wall for several days now trying to 
figure out how to fix this issue.  I am trying to import several large 
shapefiles into PostGIS using shp2pgsql, however I keep getting the 
following error:

psql:shapefile.sql:133787: ERROR:  invalid byte sequence for encoding 
"UTF8": 0xa8

HINT:  This error can also happen if the byte sequence does not match 
the encoding expected by the server, which is controlled by 
"client_encoding".

The database is set to UTF8 and a search on google has not turned up 
much.  The DB server is running on Win2k. 

I am rather stumped since I have no idea if this is an issue on the 
server side, with the shapefile or with shp2pgsql.

I have no idea how to solve this and was wondering if someone would be 
gracious enough to nudge me in the right direction here?

Many thanks in advance.