diff --git a/doc/changelog.txt b/doc/changelog.txt
index aa1deda7..17435fa7 100644
--- a/doc/changelog.txt
+++ b/doc/changelog.txt
@@ -8,6 +8,8 @@ Fixes:
   Closes: SF bug #3415274
 - checking: Fix W3C HTML checking by using the new soap12 output.
   Closes: SF bug #3413022
+- gui: Fix startup when configuration file contains errors.
+  Closes: SF bug #3392021
 
 Features:
 - checking: If a warning regex is configured, multiple matches in
diff --git a/linkcheck/gui/__init__.py b/linkcheck/gui/__init__.py
index a890ac1e..ec3ec2bb 100644
--- a/linkcheck/gui/__init__.py
+++ b/linkcheck/gui/__init__.py
@@ -204,7 +204,7 @@ class LinkCheckerMain (QtGui.QMainWindow, Ui_MainWindow):
         try:
             self.config.read()
         except LinkCheckerError, msg:
-            self.config_error = msg
+            self.config_error = unicode(msg)
 
     def set_config (self):
         """Set configuration."""