Hi HomerJ,
I would look into permissions on the DB. I have seen this type of issue before and It was an issue with the database permissions. In that instance, the client's DBA group had restricted the permissions where the user account could not write new objects into the database. They had not realized when creating new tests or creating new projects the system needs to write new fields in the database. The permissions were corrected and the issue was resolved. I would look into the permissions first.

Hope this helps,
Dan