diff --git a/toolkit/dataloader_mixins.py b/toolkit/dataloader_mixins.py
index 55bbff88f..ba9e0074f 100644
--- a/toolkit/dataloader_mixins.py
+++ b/toolkit/dataloader_mixins.py
@@ -40,6 +40,17 @@
     from toolkit.data_transfer_object.data_loader import FileItemDTO
     from toolkit.stable_diffusion_model import StableDiffusion
 
+
+def _open_text(path, mode='r'):
+    """Open a text file trying utf-8-sig first, falling back to cp1252."""
+    try:
+        f = open(path, mode, encoding='utf-8-sig')
+        f.read()
+        f.seek(0)
+        return f
+    except UnicodeDecodeError:
+        return open(path, mode, encoding='cp1252')
+
 accelerator = get_accelerator()
 
 # def get_associated_caption_from_img_path(img_path):
@@ -148,7 +159,7 @@ def get_caption_item(self: 'AiToolkitDataset', index):
         default_prompt_path_with_ext = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(img_path), 'default' + ext)
 
         if os.path.exists(prompt_path):
-            with open(prompt_path, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
+            with _open_text(prompt_path) as f:
                 prompt = f.read()
                 # check if is json
                 if prompt_path.endswith('.json'):
@@ -158,11 +169,11 @@ def get_caption_item(self: 'AiToolkitDataset', index):
 
                 prompt = clean_caption(prompt)
         elif os.path.exists(default_prompt_path_with_ext):
-            with open(default_prompt_path, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
+            with _open_text(default_prompt_path) as f:
                 prompt = f.read()
                 prompt = clean_caption(prompt)
         elif os.path.exists(default_prompt_path):
-            with open(default_prompt_path, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
+            with _open_text(default_prompt_path) as f:
                 prompt = f.read()
                 prompt = clean_caption(prompt)
         else:
@@ -339,7 +350,7 @@ def load_caption(self: 'FileItemDTO', caption_dict: Union[dict, None]=None):
             short_caption = None
 
             if os.path.exists(prompt_path):
-                with open(prompt_path, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
+                with _open_text(prompt_path) as f:
                     prompt = f.read()
                     short_caption = None
                     if prompt_path.endswith('.json'):
@@ -1611,7 +1622,7 @@ def __init__(self: 'FileItemDTO', *args, **kwargs):
             caption_path = file_path_no_ext + '.json'
             if not os.path.exists(caption_path):
                 raise Exception(f"Error: caption file not found for poi: {caption_path}")
-            with open(caption_path, 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:
+            with _open_text(caption_path) as f:
                 json_data = json.load(f)
             if 'poi' not in json_data:
                 print_acc(f"Warning: poi not found in caption file: {caption_path}")