Apparently there are about twenty different things that can go wrong with
the UPS. What's your farm topology?
Are your Forefront Identity Manager services (Windows Services) started? If
not, then check the Event Log. Make sure that your UPS service account has
Directory Replication permissions on the domain. Also, if you have
mixed-mode AD, make sure that the account in question is a member of
the "Pre-Windows
2000 Compatible Access" group.
Our last problem was that the FIM services were ignoring the fact that our
SQL cluster was running a named instance. The Event Log showed that FIM was
trying to hit the default instance, which of course did not have the profile
sync DB. If this is your problem, you'll need to create an alias on any
machines running the User Profile Service (install the SQL Server client
utilities first if you haven't). The article at
www.sharepointbandit.com/.../...rofile_23.htmldeta\
ils
the process, though our SQL client tools were different since we're
on a later version; the settings are the same though.