Error 1267

After installing and reinstalling Ninjaboard several times, I cannot get the forum to work, at all. I have already read tips and advice saying to go through and change collation to utf8_general_ci, in mySQL database, and I've done that. The only thing that remains is, for some reason- under MySQL's specs it says "MySQL charset: UTF-8 Unicode (utf8)." Everything else I manually went through and made utf8_general_ci, yes manually, yes all of it. Nothing I can do will change this, NOTHING. I've about had it, I've googled the crap out of myself and read so many forums my eyes are bleeding. Does anyone have ANY advice on this? I've wasted almost 6 hours on trying to get Ninjaboard to work, and I'd really like for that time to pay off because the extension looks fantastic (if it would work), but I'm really close to abandoning it for something else that (is inferior, BUT) WORKS.

Thanks in advance.

John,

Thanks for the advice, I gave what you suggested a try but there was no change. If I click on "Forums" in the Ninjaboard dashboard, or if I try to create a forum from the menu manager, I get "Error 1267" and nothing can be done further. I'm wondering if the issue is no longer with my collation but the fact that when the database was created it was with utf8_unicode_ci instead of utf8_general_ci. Even though everything says it is utf8_general_ci, under MySQL Charset on the database homepage, it says "utf8_Unicode_ci" and I can find no way to change that. However, mySQL collation connection is utf8_general_ci, and so are all of the tables and everything else. If this is not the problem, then I have absolutely no idea what else could cause Ninjaboard to fail so completely. If you have any other ideas, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks again,
Don