LoRz

If you have experiencing this error in CodeIgniter using CodeIgniter 1.6.x and MySQL 4.0

Unable to set database connection charset: utf8

It is setting the character set and collation for the database to which you are connecting.

A quick and dirty way of fixing this is looking for the db_set_charset() function on your system/database/drivers/your_driver/your_driver_driver.php

function db_set_charset($charset, $collation)
{
        return TRUE;
       //return @mysql_query("SET NAMES '".$this->escape_str($charset)."' COLLATE '".$this->escape_str($collation)."'", $this->conn_id);
}

A better fix

function db_set_charset($charset, $collation)
{
  if($charset == false || $collation == false)
  {
    return true;
  }
  else
  {
    return @mysql_query("SET NAMES '".$this->escape_str($charset)."' COLLATE '".$this->escape_str($collation)."'", $this->conn_id);
  }
}

Set the following in your database.php

$db['default']['char_set'] = false;
$db['default']['dbcollat'] = false;