I figured out the problem that I was having.
1. The problem with activesync was caused by my firewall. This is a link for settings on most anitvirus and firewall programs (mine was trend micro):
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobi...c/default.mspx
2. The problem with the certificate: Since I couldn't get activesync to work, I didn't have access to the phone folders. Once I got activesync through my firewall, I exported my certificate from exchange server and put it on the phone. It was a *.pfx file. I selected it and when I chose 'action' I was able to see the certinst.exe file. When I clicked on that file, I got an error message. I went back to the server and exported the certificate again but exported it as a *.cer file. Once that file was on the phone and I selected it and double clicked it (select 'action' from the menu button) and chose certinst.exe, it installed the cert and I was able to sync to my server!
YEA!