The apr_xlate_open function has problems loading the current default code page on Windows, it creates and encoding name like "Cp1252" when the encoding module is actually named "windows-1252". I've also discovered several other annoying habits of apr-iconv (an iconv implementation which is used by apr_xlate on platforms without a "native" iconv) which have convinced me to rewrite charset transcoding code so it does not depend on apr_xlate on Windows.
Until I have a chance to rework that code, you may want to pull a snapshot from before 31 March (can't find my CVS book at the moment to give you the syntax).
On building a release version, use
ant -Ddebug=false
