well. heres my solution...
latest MySQL 4.1 does not work with XOOPS at all atm (w32 test environment) . MySQL 4.0.xx works fine.
will check latest MySQL and XOOPS with my solaris and an my debian systems asap.

well non of the above solutions worked for me.
mysql is running fine and i can connect to it with a command line and MySQL admin. and i still get this damn error message.
no idea what could be wrong. it doesnt even seem it tries to connect at all by the speed the message comes up and by netstat .
what kind of error message is this anyway?
" Could not connect to the database server."
"Please check the database server and its configuration."

the only message that could be worse would be.

"error. pls check!"

hey devs can we have this fixed?