“Unicode Error ”unicodeescape" codec can't decode bytes… Cannot open text files in Python 3

I'm utilizing Python 3.1 on a Windows 7 machine. Russian is the default system language, and utf-8 is the default encoding.

Taking a gander at the response to a past question, I have tried utilizing the "codecs" module to give me a little karma. Here are a couple of models:

>>> g = codecs.open("C:\Users\Eric\Desktop\beeline.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")

SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-4: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape (<pyshell#39>, line 1)

>>> g = codecs.open("C:\Users\Eric\Desktop\Site.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")

SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-4: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape (<pyshell#40>, line 1)

>>> g = codecs.open("C:\Python31\Notes.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")

SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 11-12: malformed \N character escape (<pyshell#41>, line 1)

>>> g = codecs.open("C:\Users\Eric\Desktop\Site.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8")

SyntaxError: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-4: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape (<pyshell#44>, line 1)

My last idea was, I thought it might have been the fact that Windows "translates" a few folders, such as the "users" folder, into Russian (though typing "users" is still the correct path), so I tried it in the Python31 folder. Still, no luck. Any ideas?