diff --git a/desmume/src/frontend/windows/winutil.cpp b/desmume/src/frontend/windows/winutil.cpp
index 1bab5f8d4..07e8b4bad 100644
--- a/desmume/src/frontend/windows/winutil.cpp
+++ b/desmume/src/frontend/windows/winutil.cpp
@@ -87,7 +87,7 @@ void GetINIPath()
 	}
 
 	FCEUD_MakePathDirs(IniName);
-	wcscpy(IniNameW,mbstowcs(IniName).c_str()); //careful to use locale C-style mbstowcs to get IniName (which is with locale encoding) to unicode
+	wcscpy(IniNameW,mbstowcs_locale(IniName).c_str()); 
 
 	//write BOM to get unicode
 	FILE* test = fopen(IniName,"rb");
diff --git a/desmume/src/path.cpp b/desmume/src/path.cpp
index c2c2b883d..d71b07ecf 100644
--- a/desmume/src/path.cpp
+++ b/desmume/src/path.cpp
@@ -170,7 +170,7 @@ void createDirectoryRecursively(std::wstring path)
 
 void FCEUD_MakePathDirs(const char *fname)
 {
-	createDirectoryRecursively(mbstowcs(fname));
+	createDirectoryRecursively(mbstowcs_locale(fname));
 }
 #endif
 //------------------------------
diff --git a/desmume/src/utils/xstring.cpp b/desmume/src/utils/xstring.cpp
index d491b180b..6b92f5f30 100644
--- a/desmume/src/utils/xstring.cpp
+++ b/desmume/src/utils/xstring.cpp
@@ -284,6 +284,19 @@ std::string mass_replace(const std::string &source, const std::string &victim, c
 	return answer;
 }
 
+std::wstring mbstowcs_locale(std::string str)
+{
+	#ifdef HOST_WINDOWS
+	int plenty = str.size()*4+1;
+	wchar_t *wgarbage = new wchar_t[plenty];
+	MultiByteToWideChar(CP_ACP, MB_PRECOMPOSED, str.data(), -1, wgarbage, plenty);
+	std::wstring ret = wgarbage;
+	delete[] wgarbage;
+	return ret;
+	#endif
+	return mbstowcs(str);
+}
+
 //convert a std::string to std::wstring
 std::wstring mbstowcs(std::string str)
 {
diff --git a/desmume/src/utils/xstring.h b/desmume/src/utils/xstring.h
index 92a881ceb..5741d998f 100644
--- a/desmume/src/utils/xstring.h
+++ b/desmume/src/utils/xstring.h
@@ -107,5 +107,7 @@ std::string mass_replace(const std::string &source, const std::string &victim, c
 std::wstring mbstowcs(std::string str);
 std::string wcstombs(std::wstring str);
 
+std::wstring mbstowcs_locale(std::string str);
+
 
 #endif