Just for reference: I'm on Windows 7, and 3.0.28 didn't work for me either. Same error with the unicode failure. 3.0.29 runs just fine and I was able to read the data from all 8 of my US5000 batteries (all of them on software version 1.3). So it's likely not related to the Windows Version, but just some bug in the software.
Thank you very much for providing the newer versions of the monitoring software!