Error Event ID 5555, Event ID 7888 after changing Web App Association with new SSP

I had come across a strange issue which exposes some of the inabilities of MOSS. I had to recreate SSP in a SharePoint Farm. I then went and changed the association of web applications to point to new SSP so that I can get rid of old faulty SSP. (It was faluty because the search was stuck on "Crawling Full (Computing Ranking)" status and when tried to remove the SSP it was then stuck on "Unprovisioning" status). So to remove the old SSP:
- I created a new SSP.
-Associated web applications from old SSP to new SSP through Central Administration.
-Change the default SSP to new one.
-Deleted the old SSP including all associated databases.
-Deleted old SSP web application.

After this next day I saw in event logs there were errors thrown related synchronization of MySite and Portal web application with content databases. The errors were as below:

Event Type: ErrorEvent Source: Office SharePoint ServerEvent Category: User Profiles Event ID: 5555Date: 8/10/2008Time: 1:01:00 PMUser: N/AComputer: AUYXUAP310WBC32Description:Failure trying to synch web application ab1d413c-4e4b-40af-b9f2-61fedadb385d, ContentDB 4876d341-5349-4396-b0a9-3cb6f5110b1c Exception message was Cannot open database "WSS_SharedServices2_DB" requested by the login. The login failed.Login failed for user 'ESDEVAU\SRV-SHRPT07'.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Event Type: ErrorEvent Source: Office SharePoint ServerEvent Category: Office Server General Event ID: 7888Date: 8/10/2008Time: 1:01:00 PMUser: N/AComputer: AUYXUAP310WBC32Description:A runtime exception was detected. Details follow. Message: Cannot open database "WSS_SharedServices2_DB" requested by the login. The login failed.Login failed for user 'ESDEVAU\SRV-SHRPT07'.
Techinal Details:System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Cannot open database "WSS_SharedServices2_DB" requested by the login. The login failed.Login failed for user 'ESDEVAU\SRV-SHRPT07'. at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionPool.GetConnection(DbConnection owningObject) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.GetConnection(DbConnection owningConnection) at System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionClosed.OpenConnection(DbConnection outerConnection, DbConnectionFactory connectionFactory) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.Open() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Data.SqlSession.OpenConnection() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Data.SqlSession.ExecuteReader(SqlCommand command, CommandBehavior behavior) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.SharedObjectStore.GetObject[T]() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.SharedResourceProvider.Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ISharedObjectStore.GetObject[T]() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.SharedApplicationCollection`1.GetValue(SharedResourceProvider sharedResourceProvider) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.SharedApplicationCollection`1.get_Item(SharedResourceProvider sharedResourceProvider) at Microsoft.Office.Server.ServerContext.GetApplication[S,T](String name) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchContext..ctor(ServerContext serverContext, Boolean cached) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchContext.GetContext(SharedResourceProvider sharedResourceProvider) at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.SRPSite.SynchronizeManagedPropertyMappings() at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.SRPSite._Init(ServerContext serverContext) at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.SRPSite..ctor(ServerContext serverContext) at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfileConfigManager..ctor(ServerContext serverContext) at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.ContentDBSynchronizer.SynchContentDB() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Diagnostics.FirstChanceHandler.ExceptionFilter(Boolean fRethrowException, TryBlock tryBlock, FilterBlock filter, CatchBlock catchBlock, FinallyBlock finallyBlock)
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

These errors are related to profile synchronization issues. As WSS and MOSS has got different storage of User Profile data the "SYNC" job runs every 1 hour by default to synchronize data between the content databases. And Web Application stores these profile data. But for some entry in content databases of web application it still thinks that it has to open old SSP database. So now we have to clean the entries in following manner:

-Firtly get the GUIDs of all the web applications and content databases as thrown in the error long.
-Use this GUID to find the web application name because of which sync is going crazy. You can either use SharePoint Inspector or SharePoint Manager to find these details. Both can be downloaded from http://www.codeplex.com/spm and http://www.codeplex.com/spi
-Since I didn't prepared the web application's content database before changing the SSP hence all the issue started. So probably (I haven't tried yet) if we do this step before changing the association then we might not run into this situation. So now we have to fix the synchronization of content databases using "preparetomove" STSADM command. When the preparetomove operation is not run prior to moving the content database, synchronization can fail on a particular content database that has been moved to a new Web application. Synchronization is fixed for that content database by using this command. We will run this command for every web application and corresponding content database as follows:

stsadm -o preparetomove -site %WEBAPP% -oldcontentdb %GUID Of Content DB from Error Log%

-Once this command is run successfully we need to detach and reattach all the faulty content databases with their web applications again. You will do this by using "deletecontentdb" and "addcontentdb" STSADM commands as shown below:

stsadm -o deletecontentdb -url %WEBAPP% -databaseserver %DBSERVER% -databasename %DBNAME%
stsadm -o addcontentdb -url %WEBAPP% -databasename %DBNAME% -databaseserver %DBSERVER%

After doing this you can wait for next synchronization which occurs every hour by default or change the sync timing default value temporarily by using following command:

stsadm -o sync -synctiming "m:5" (This will run synchronization in every 5 minutes)

Wait for 5 minutes and check your error log. You will not see any reported errors.

Reset the sync timing back to default value of 1 hour
stsadm -o sync -synctiming "h:1"

Hopefully this will help you in resolving similar errors or issues.

Kunal