UGH! Enbarrased to admit that we are actually running SS2k5, NOT 2k8! i pulled the wrong version number. Management Studio tools are 2008, however. I hope posting this in this forum hasn't bolloxed any help I can still get.

Additionally, I found out a bit more about why it keeps asking for the cert password. Apparently NONE of the securables being assigned to my account are saving. No matter how many times the DBA assigns the cert and symmetric keys to my account as secutables, and assigns permissions to those, they are gone the next time we look. There are NO errors while saving I should add.

Has anyone seent his issue? It might explain my last issue above.

Thanks.

Kurt.