I had similar issue with 2.8.2 permalinks. I could not make it work with other permalinks except “/index.php/%category%/%postname%/”. You can try once whether this is working or not.
Is there any way people can hack or reset the admin password. I have setup the wordpress jiltin.com sometime two months before and reset my custom password through back-end update sql with md5(two months before).I was able to login and function fine. Suddenly,yesterday at 5:34 AM PST (by that time I was sleeping) the password is reset and I got email. I have 2.8 version of wordpress. Is it automatically reset by wordpress or someone else tried to hack and reset the admin password and left it reset? I could fix the issue with back-end mysql linux access immediately. I would like to know this is a bug or hack on my system or hack trial to my system. Is there any plugin to trace the reset or login trace with wordpress?