Vtiger

Ubuntu ubuntu-16.04.4-server-i386 (32 bit)
Vtiger version 7.1.0
Apache2 version 2.4.18
MariaDB version mysql Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.0.36-MariaDB
php version 5.6
After getting this "result is not an object" I had to
1) Drop the vtiger database
2) Delete config.ini.php
3) Change the database like this:
ALTER DATABASE vtiger CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;