Entourage Database Problem

I have a very large Entourage database. I updated to Office 2008 on Thursday night & install seemed to go ok. All apps including Entourage worked. Turned off my iMac & went home. Fri morning when I cane to work & turned on machine, I could open Entourage but nothing worked. Kept getting error 4362.

Called Microsoft & they had me retrieve 2004 Entourage 2004 from trash. We rebuilt database. It took a long time so he told me to let that finish & when it was done to archive my 2004 database & call back. I stayed late Friday night & let the rebuild complete. I also deletd about 15,000 emails .

I just tried to archive 2004 but get error message: there was a problem saving one of your messages. Your Office database may be damaged. Start the Database Utility to verify your Database.

So I am doing this again now but I seem to be going in circles.

2004 works ok but it appears I will not be able to get 2008 to work.

What are my options>?

Do I have to keep 2004 running for old emails?

Can I start using 2008 but import calendar & contacts & start email from scratch?

Help !!!

Thanks.