Adding a Server to the Farm - Cannot Connect to Configuration Database

I'm stumped and I've been reading blogs, technet and other SharePoint resources for several hours now. 

I am trying to add a server to our SharePoint farm which is currently a single server farm (it was set up as a farm, but with only one server). Here is the snippet from my log:

Failed to connect to the configuration database.
An exception of type System.ArgumentException was thrown.  Additional exception information: Error during decryption. System error code 0.
System.ArgumentException: Error during decryption. System error code 0.
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPCredentialManager.DecryptWithKey(Byte[] rgbEncryptedPassphrase, Byte[] rgbKey)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPCredentialManager.DecryptWithMasterKey(Byte[] rgbEncryptedPassphrase, SPFarm farm)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPEncryptedString.GetSecureStringValue(Byte[] rgbAlternateKey)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPManagedAccount.Deploy(SPApplicationPool applicationPool)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebServiceInstance.Provision()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Join()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.CreateOrConnectConfigDb()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.Run()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()

This is the error I am getting now, previously I was getting an similar error below:

Exception: System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: service
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPServiceInstance..ctor(String name, SPServer server, SPService service)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Join()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.CreateOrConnectConfigDb()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.Run()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()

I think I resolved this error by adding an alias in cliconfg. Our organization uses non-default sql ports, and the server that the farm was set up on is also the sql server so i don't think I had to specify the port in the connection. I created a simple alias to redirect the normal port to our port. And now that I've done that I am getting the error at the top. I can't seem to find much help on this specific error unless it was spitting out system error code 997(or something). 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am running the install as the Farm Account, which has sysadmin privileges on the sql server. I've confirmed that I can connect to the SQL server from the new server. I tried this on both our prod and dev farm and both farms are experiencing the same issue...