diff --git a/js/xpconnect/loader/mozJSComponentLoader.cpp b/js/xpconnect/loader/mozJSComponentLoader.cpp
index 5c42d9986908..85e76257767c 100644
--- a/js/xpconnect/loader/mozJSComponentLoader.cpp
+++ b/js/xpconnect/loader/mozJSComponentLoader.cpp
@@ -121,7 +121,8 @@ Dump(JSContext *cx, unsigned argc, jsval *vp)
     if (!chars)
         return false;
 
-    NS_ConvertUTF16toUTF8 utf8str(reinterpret_cast<const PRUnichar*>(chars));
+    NS_ConvertUTF16toUTF8 utf8str(reinterpret_cast<const PRUnichar*>(chars),
+                                  length);
 #ifdef ANDROID
     __android_log_print(ANDROID_LOG_INFO, "Gecko", "%s", utf8str.get());
 #endif
diff --git a/js/xpconnect/src/XPCShellImpl.cpp b/js/xpconnect/src/XPCShellImpl.cpp
index d4599d2f41b5..f9cd1050baf8 100644
--- a/js/xpconnect/src/XPCShellImpl.cpp
+++ b/js/xpconnect/src/XPCShellImpl.cpp
@@ -287,14 +287,22 @@ Dump(JSContext *cx, unsigned argc, jsval *vp)
     if (!str)
         return false;
 
-    JSAutoByteString bytes(cx, str);
-    if (!bytes)
+    size_t length;
+    const jschar *chars = JS_GetStringCharsAndLength(cx, str, &length);
+    if (!chars)
         return false;
 
+    NS_ConvertUTF16toUTF8 utf8str(reinterpret_cast<const PRUnichar*>(chars),
+                                  length);
 #ifdef ANDROID
-    __android_log_print(ANDROID_LOG_INFO, "Gecko", "%s", bytes.ptr());
+    __android_log_print(ANDROID_LOG_INFO, "Gecko", "%s", utf8str.get());
 #endif
-    fputs(bytes.ptr(), gOutFile);
+#ifdef XP_WIN
+    if (IsDebuggerPresent()) {
+      OutputDebugStringW(reinterpret_cast<const PRUnichar*>(chars));
+    }
+#endif
+    fputs(utf8str.get(), gOutFile);
     fflush(gOutFile);
     return true;
 }
diff --git a/testing/xpcshell/runxpcshelltests.py b/testing/xpcshell/runxpcshelltests.py
index 000968d43cbe..98fc996df618 100644
--- a/testing/xpcshell/runxpcshelltests.py
+++ b/testing/xpcshell/runxpcshelltests.py
@@ -71,14 +71,6 @@ import manifestparser
 import mozcrash
 import mozinfo
 
-# ---------------------------------------------------------------
-#TODO: replace this with json.loads when Python 2.6 is required.
-def parse_json(j):
-    """
-    Awful hack to parse a restricted subset of JSON strings into Python dicts.
-    """
-    return eval(j, {'true':True,'false':False,'null':None})
-
 """ Control-C handling """
 gotSIGINT = False
 def markGotSIGINT(signum, stackFrame):
@@ -448,6 +440,9 @@ class XPCShellTestThread(Thread):
         human-readable log message. """
         message = self.message_from_line(line)
 
+        if isinstance(message, unicode):
+            message = message.encode("utf-8")
+
         if message.endswith('\n'):
             # A new line is always added by head.js to delimit messages,
             # however consumers will want to supply their own.
@@ -1251,7 +1246,7 @@ class XPCShellTests(object):
             if not os.path.isfile(mozInfoFile):
                 self.log.error("Error: couldn't find mozinfo.json at '%s'. Perhaps you need to use --build-info-json?" % mozInfoFile)
                 return False
-            self.mozInfo = parse_json(open(mozInfoFile).read())
+            self.mozInfo = json.loads(open(mozInfoFile).read())
         mozinfo.update(self.mozInfo)
 
         # The appDirKey is a optional entry in either the default or individual test