In Land Desktop 2008, most profile manipulation commands simply do not work. This is absolutely inexcusable as profiling is integral to all civil design work. This is definitely a bug that warrants a pre-service pack hotfix. Autodesk's reply to me is as follows:

Thank you for contacting Autodesk Support.

The issue that you are having is a known issue that development is looking into. It occurs when the surface or project name is 10 characters or more. This issue is scheduled to be fixed in the first service pack for the product due out in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, the only workaround available is to rename the surface less than 10 characters. Any alignment that previously referenced this surface will still contain the long surface name and will need to be deleted. If you use the Erase command in your drawing and then Undo, this will remove the alignment and will bring back the linework for you to redefine the alignment. Once this is done, you should be able to successfully recreate the profile and work with sections.

We apologize for the inconvenience this issue may cause. I wish there was an easier solution, but until the service pack is released, this is the best solution we have. Sorry.

Best Regards,

Autodesk Support Team

Status as of 2008 SP2: Fixed