Hi, mrurmil,
I'll bet you did an update, instead of a restore, to get to 2.1, yes? Try a DFU restore and clean up that corrupted application database first. Make sure that you set up your phone as a new phone after doing so, instead of restoring from backup. Otherwise, you're just going to reload the corrupted database. Use Sync instead to get back your apps, etc. This works great for me!
If you're not familiar with it, I posted the DFU restore procedure
here.
Good Luck!
Mark