After over a month of contacting support, I have come to the conclusion that Adobe does not offer advance support for CPS. The only thing that the low level tech support agents are capable of doing is
1. transferring you to someone else,
2. Sending you links to the online manual and livedocs that you have probably already read.
After spending over a month and roughly 100+ hours I have determine that CPS cannot handle multiple client certificates sent via a Department of Defense Common Access Card. I did learn the following info that you might find useful.
1. Contribute must be able to write a file to the root (when you 1st connect it writes TMPjaisd8ua89ua.htm then deletes it) If this failes for any reason, contribute gives you the ever so helpful could not connect error
2. contribute must be able to write / delete files in root/_mm
3. If you want users to send drafts contribute must have access to root/MMWIP
4. If you are using Contribute CS3 or newer and you remove a connection from a computer, the connection isn't really removed 100%, you must go into regedit, current user, software, adobe, contribute41 and clear out keystore, trusted CPS Server, Admin Servers. Just leave the defaults. This might be different for version 5
5. Work with an LDAP admin to get the correct LDAP settings so CPS can view the directory
6. If using multi LDAP servers ensure that replication is working correctly on them all otherwise your users won't be able to access the site if connected to a faulty LDAP server. Also make sure users can get to the directory via windows if using local/Network connection
7. Work with Network admin to have security logging enable on the web server so anytime contribute gives an error they can check the log to see exactly what your account was trying to do at the time of the error.
8. Read the Manuals, in fact memorize them.
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Contribute/4.1_CPS/help.html?content=con_o verview_ov_3.html
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Contribute/4.1_CPS/help.html?content=con_s etup_install_si_18.html
http://livedocs.adobe.com/contribute/311/deploying_en/wwhelp/wwhimpl/j s/html/wwhelp.htm?href=00000049.htm#134387
I hope this will shed a little light on CPS and contribute or if not then at least give you some direction on how to debug your problems since Adobe will never help you.