Hey there, welcome to the community!
Sorry to hear you’ve gotten to a rough start with your Photon.
The error you’re seeing is one I haven’t yet encountered, so I’m not sure if I can be of much assistance. That said, you can try following this tutorial, albeit with newer versions: Tutorial: Particle-cli on Windows [07 Jun 2015] I’ll also pass the error along to those that should know 
Alternatively, for the time being, you should be able to enter the credentials over Serial as well. If you’ve got putty, you should be able to connect to the board while it’s in listening mode. Then, press ‘w’ to connect. (don’t hold me on that ‘w’, it’s been a while since I’ve used that 
).
Give it a shot and let us know if that worked out.