Hi thanks Abraham and Kentakahas,
I am able to run the EnergyPlus_ finally after I removed any spaces or special characters in the file path of the weather file.
Previously my weather file was: AUS_VIC.Melbourne.948660_IWEC (1)
Changed to: AUS_VIC.Melbourne.948660_IWEC
Credit: I found the solution on another question in the forum ( Weather Simulation requested, but no weather file attached )
And this allowed the simulation to finally work!