This one got me and took a fair while to figure out, so I thought I'd post about it.
I was attempting to create a new Survey Database, and kept getting an error "The survey database does not exist and could not be recreated", with a message that "Format of the initialization string does not conform to specification starting at index 58."
I finally tracked the problem down to an apostrophe in the name of one of the folders in my Working Folder path. This was not a problem with C3D 2010 and earlier, but is evidently a problem starting with C3D 2011 (and it may only affect the 64-bit version, I don't have a 32-bit version handy to test). Renaming the folder, so that there was no longer an apostrophe in the folder name, solved the issue.
Solved! Go to Solution.
Solved by Sinc. Go to Solution.
So I guess it's safe to say it was never solved? ? ? ? I got a user with the same issue in Civil 3D 2015.
Just an FYI - on my end the issue was that the user had named the project folder with an apostrophe in the name. I removed the apostrophe and the error disappeared.