utf8 and database connexion

[eluser]dede125a[/eluser]
I am moving an "old" application made on CI 1.5.4 to 1.6.2 everything goes right on my Mac (with MAMP) but once I test my application on the real server I've got this error :
"Unable to set client connection character set: utf8"

I saw that these 2 lines :

Code:

$db['default']['char_set'] = "utf8";
$db['default']['dbcollat'] = "utf8_general_ci";

appears in the 1.6.x database config file.

Naively, I tried to comment theses 2 lines but the DB driver gave me 4 new error !

I think it's because my local database is version 5.0.37 and the real server is on 4.0.25 but I'm not a db specialist so...

Like you see, I'm lost :down:

Thanks for your help