MY_Model malfunctions after upgrade to CI 2.1

[eluser]dblackherod[/eluser]
I had a stable system using CI 1.7.3 and HMVC 4.x

I upgraded to CI 2.0 while still maintaining HMVC 4.x and everything still worked fine.

I upgraded to HMVC 5.2 (i guess or 5.3) and everything still worked fine.

All this time, MY_Model class had no problems whatsoever.

Now, I upgrade to CI 2.1.0 and HMVC 5.4 and all my modules' model classes extending MY_Model return the fatal error 'Call to a member function on a non-object' for all $this->... calls.

What may I be doing wrong?

I have ceased to extend the base Model class (CI_Model) from MY_Model yet the problem persists.

I have also autoloaded the database library as opposed to manually loading them where I want them and the problem persists.

What do I do?

for starters I know that errors like this only show up when the library owning the property (in this case $db) isn't being loaded properly and the solution usually is to laod the required library - this prompted me to autolaod the database library and comment out all other $this->load->database() calls.

I need guidance...