commands.getoutput() is broken on Windows. The issue has been detected in v2.7.2, but still persists in v2.7.3:
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Python 2.7.3 (default, Apr 10 2012, 23:24:47) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import commands;
>>> print commands.getoutput("dir");
'{' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
>>>
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 The error message comes from cmd.exe. Looks like Python tries to feed native Windows shell with UNIX-style commands sequence in {...}.
 I believe this is very simple to fix, please take a look at it. Some our internal software croaks because of this.

The documentation http://docs.python.org/library/commands.html
prominently says "Platforms: Unix".  This module does not work on Windows.
You should really use the subprocess module:
>>> import subprocess
>>> output = subprocess.check_output("dir", shell=True)

Hmm.  Maybe issue 10197 should be reclassified as an enhancement...

I see it's deprecated and dropped, but anyway, why not to fix it to work on Windows? From 10197 i see the fix is quite simple, and there is lots of legacy code i believe.