Ok had a perfectly operating cart although on 1.3.8a
My shop cart somehow became unuseable, corrupted by a date issue at the time, maybe by the server, or a hacker.
I saw this date error line once, so no idea what its said now.
It never came back again to copy it and I could not get back into the site, having an almost blank page.

So I created a 'site down' index page & moved the whole cart files of the site to a different location folder to test out, but have had no success at all, only now keeps saying;
0 DB_ERROR_NOT_CONNECTED
in:
[select * from zen_project_version WHERE project_version_key = 'Zen-Cart Database' ]

Both the configure.php files show the correct database name, password & admin directory, in its new location using the original database I cannot afford to lose, not so much the customers but the stock inventory data, I assume it keeps all but the actual images. It checks out fine in MySQL.

In desperation I thought to create a new database name in mysql, imported the saved sql backup so I intend to use that to use on the upgrade to 1.5 if this repair cannot be resolved today. Noted that the new database is 0.4MB smaller after copying?

My preference is to work out how to keep my 1.3.9 version running for a bit longer with its many previously stable tweaks, customisations & templates that are not yet ready to work with 1.5 as a new install but using the original live database.

Have read many similar threads on database access errors but Im going round in circles just being told to look at the two configure files, and the mysql/myphp database names/passwords, not that anything but the sub-directory name has been changed since the crash.
I will be using a new admin subdirectory just in case the site had unauthorised access that killed that version that might stop an upgrade from 1.3.8a to 1.5

phpMyAdmin Server version: 5.1.56
PHP version: 5.3.8
Operating system: linux (server)