Thanks for your patience with all of this everyone!
Given the nature of this problem and how difficult it is to solve on Windows, can you try this workaround:
- When creating a new site, under the “Advanced” tab choose “Browse” for the “Local site path”
- Navigate to some place that doesn’t have any special characters within its name
- Create a new site folder and use that to finish creating a site
I’ve used this to create a new site within C:\Users\Public\site-name.
Here’s a screenshot to help visualize:
