at least its a different error than v7 had.

seems an old libMysql.dll is somewhere in the path.
You may want to delete this library and install MySQL C-Connector -- downloadable from MySQL official web site, then configure path to libmysql in Tools->settings->external tools

well. that path does not even exist. but i'm downloading...

according to phped, its using the one that is bundled with phped. c:\program files (x86)\nusphere\phped\libmysql.dll - and it is unchangeable.

I don't know about that specific error, but I always though newer versions of libmysql.dll cannot be distributed for licensing reasons.

I've always copied the libmysql.dll from the MySQL directory to the NuSphere directory and it works fine. I've done that with v8 and haven't seen any issues so far. A quick giveaway is the original dll is 228KB and the newer ones are over 2MB.

i've done that. it changed the error from the original post to "you must download mysql connector and update the path in the settings".

the path editor eventually after clicking it enough lets me change it, but no matter if i point it at libmysql.dll in the MySQL program folder or the copied over libmysql.dll in phped, it continues to qq about installing the connector.

I'm not sure exactly what you are doing.

I don't point PhpED to libmysql.dll in the MySQL folder. I copy libmysql.dll from the MySQL folder and overwrite the one in the PhpED folder.

I'm not a heavy user of the PhpED DB Client as I use a dedicated DB management tool, but I've never had any errors from PhpED after overwriting this file and I'm fairly sure that is the method that Dmitri recommends.

Also, in the past PhpED has never overwritten that file again with its own one when installing updates. I'm just about to install the latest v8, so I'm just about to confirm that is still the case.

I can confirm the behaviour. I have no mysql dll's anywhere in the path and the only ones have been installed by PhpEd.

Moreover, the error message points to a non-existing directory/path exactly the same way.

Not that I need the functionality as there are free tools available. Just scratching my head....

I've always had problems with the older libmysql.dll that comes with PhpED. Overwriting with a newer libmysql.dll from a MySQL distribution makes the problems go away. So far in v8 I haven't had a DB client error.

Maybe one possibility is that changing the path means that PhpED is still loading the older library in the PhpED install directory. Because I overwrote that library and did not change the path, maybe that's why it works for me?

path is either embedded into dll or read from my.ini and error message comes from this DLL. If you installed the DLL according to MySQL instructions and it still does not work for you, please contact MySQL company (Oracle now) and ask them what to do. We have very little to do in this area. For me as well as for many other users it works fine.