Master Key Encryption and Certificate Encryption Errors

I'm trying to create an encryption certificate using my  Master Key.   But first I'm trying to recreate the encryption because I am on a new db server.   I backed up and restored all my DB's to this new server.  normally to recreate the encryption all i would do is run this command:


OPEN MASTER KEY DECRYPTION BY PASSWORD = 'foobar'
ALTER MASTER KEY ADD ENCRYPTION BY SERVICE MASTER KEY

However, this is giving me the error:

Msg 15466, Level 16, State 2, Line 3
An error occurred during decryption.

When i try to create a certificate using this command but not running the above command:

CREATE CERTIFICATE PMRCertificate  WITH SUBJECT ='This is PMRs Cert'

I get this error:
Please create a master key in the database or open the master key in the session before performing this operation

However, if i run the second comman immediately after the first (even though the first gives me the error:  An error occurred during decryption.) then i am able to create the cert.  I can even encrypt using that cert into a varbinary(128) field.  however, when i go to decrypt it comes back NULL.  

So, what the heck am i doing wrong and what do i need to do to fix this whole mess.  I really don't want to resort to doing the encryption via a hardcoded password (ie EncryptByPassword)