OK, this is KILLING me too. I am getting this problem ever since going to Froyo. I have tried multiple ways to resolve it too.... so far:
1) I looked at my contact google.csv exported from my google apps/ gmail account and removed the tags Farce Book plastered to some of them and which were marked
!-- HTC DO NOT EDIT -- since they were only contacts that used to be associated with a farcebook account I ditched some time ago.
2) Cleared contacts cache
3) Reimported the contacts back into my gmail
4) Synced OK. Yay! Wonderful... 3 or 4 sync attempts later... same error.
5) Completely deleted 100% of my contacts from gmail and manually entered all 175 of them to ensure that they were in pristine shape and format...
6) Synced OK. Yay! Wonderful... 3 or 4 sync attempts later... same error.
I am about DONE with this. Not only will it not sync, but at times it decided to keep attempting, or at least keep notifying me that it failed by making my phone vibrate until I actually wake the phone up... 30 minutes later, back to the buzz.
This has happened on 3 different roms, multipls kernels and various SetCPU settings. My last attempt is going to be go to 100% complete stock 2.1 and allow the OTA and try it again then let Verizon support figure it out. This is just TOO MUCH.
OK, I'm back to stock 2.1 Now waiting for the OTA. VZ says that HTCs official word is all updates will be done by end of the day today and that if anyone has not received it HTC will provide a link to download it.
