Apparently not all PHP builds consider mysqli::__construct() with no parameters to be the same as mysqli_init()
diff --git a/system/database/drivers/mysqli/mysqli_driver.php b/system/database/drivers/mysqli/mysqli_driver.php
index f77176c..dc72ecc 100644
--- a/system/database/drivers/mysqli/mysqli_driver.php
+++ b/system/database/drivers/mysqli/mysqli_driver.php
@@ -69,7 +69,7 @@
? 'p:'.$this->hostname : $this->hostname;
$port = empty($this->port) ? NULL : $this->port;
$client_flags = ($this->compress === TRUE) ? MYSQLI_CLIENT_COMPRESS : 0;
- $mysqli = new mysqli();
+ $mysqli = mysqli_init();
return @$mysqli->real_connect($hostname, $this->username, $this->password, $this->database, $port, NULL, $client_flags)
? $mysqli : FALSE;