Here's my 2 cents:
I had the same problem and I tried using Notepad++ to convert to UTF-8 no BOM, and also the old "copy to MS notepad then back again" trick, all to no avail. My problem was solved by making sure all files (and 'included' files) were the same file system; I had some files that were Windows format and some that had been copied off a remote Linux server, so were in UNIX format.
