diff --git a/lucene/benchmark/src/java/org/apache/lucene/benchmark/byTask/utils/Config.java b/lucene/benchmark/src/java/org/apache/lucene/benchmark/byTask/utils/Config.java
index 0d53a1aa003..88af670dfa2 100644
--- a/lucene/benchmark/src/java/org/apache/lucene/benchmark/byTask/utils/Config.java
+++ b/lucene/benchmark/src/java/org/apache/lucene/benchmark/byTask/utils/Config.java
@@ -80,7 +80,8 @@ public class Config {
     }
     // read props from string
     this.props = new Properties();
-    props.load(new ByteArrayInputStream(sb.toString().getBytes()));
+    // props.load always assumes iso8859-1...
+    props.load(new ByteArrayInputStream(sb.toString().getBytes("ISO-8859-1")));
 
     // make sure work dir is set properly 
     if (props.get("work.dir") == null) {
diff --git a/lucene/benchmark/src/test/org/apache/lucene/benchmark/byTask/TestPerfTasksLogic.java b/lucene/benchmark/src/test/org/apache/lucene/benchmark/byTask/TestPerfTasksLogic.java
index ac1b7589567..740cd13716a 100755
--- a/lucene/benchmark/src/test/org/apache/lucene/benchmark/byTask/TestPerfTasksLogic.java
+++ b/lucene/benchmark/src/test/org/apache/lucene/benchmark/byTask/TestPerfTasksLogic.java
@@ -19,7 +19,8 @@ package org.apache.lucene.benchmark.byTask;
 
 import java.io.BufferedReader;
 import java.io.File;
-import java.io.FileReader;
+import java.io.FileInputStream;
+import java.io.InputStreamReader;
 import java.io.StringReader;
 import java.text.Collator;
 import java.util.List;
@@ -398,7 +399,9 @@ public class TestPerfTasksLogic extends BenchmarkTestCase {
     // Run algo
     Benchmark benchmark = execBenchmark(algLines1);
 
-    BufferedReader r = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(lineFile));
+    BufferedReader r = new BufferedReader(
+        new InputStreamReader(
+            new FileInputStream(lineFile), "UTF-8"));
     int numLines = 0;
     String line;
     while((line = r.readLine()) != null) {