Error 18456

[cocopud]

I am working on a test database that I have been having trouble with. A few weeks ago I set it up to replicate to itself so that I could get familiar with replicaton. In the meantime, we tried to restore a database from a different server and had code page issues. Someone was helping me with this and I believe they deleted some of the replications components, possibly in the wrong order because I was getting errors when trying to remove replication. I finally got replication removed and am now trying to re-enable it, but I am getting:
Error 18456: Login failed for user 'distributor_admin'
Remote logins for remote server 'repl_distributor' have been dropped
Server dropped
Server added
Server network name set.

I know that this is some sort of login error, but I cannot figure out the exact problem.
Additionally, when I was having the trouble removing replication, I tried to restore some previous backups before the replication, but that did not help.
I am able to login to Query Analyzer with user 'sa'.

At this point I am wondering if it would be better just to reinstall SQL 7. If I do this and backup and restore the database that is on there presently, would I still run into any of these issues.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I am pretty new to SQL Server and I am learning as I work with it.