Connect Visual Studio 2008 to Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010

I have connected Visual Studio 2008 a number of times to Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 in the past and today I needed to do it again for some Visual Studio 2008 SSRS report development. I find I always need to search around for the settings to apply this connection and thought it was time I documented these. Hopefully this will help you to if needed

Issue

You will receive the error below when attempting to connect Visual Studio 2008 to TFS 2010.

Resolution

You need to set up your instance of visual studio using the instructions below in order to connect to TFS. Old days of Visual Studio development with TFS didn’t know about TFS collections either.

Check you have the following installations installed. These are required to connect Visual Studio 2008 to Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010:

• Visual Studio 2008
• Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 [831.3MB]
• Visual Studio 2008 Team Explorer [387.4MB]
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 interoperability [KB974558] 11.2MB Microsoft Download

You will need to enter the TFS address in the format as shown below

If you still cannot connect, then close Visual Studio 2008 and create the following registry key entry. Note: To launch the registry, type regedit from the run command.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\Servers

Add a new String  Value in this location. In the value field, add the full location of your TFS server including collection name i.e. http://tfs-server:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection

Open Visual Studio 2008 again and then open Team Explorer. You should now be able to open the TFS server you set. You may also find that you will be prompted for credentials, this is normal. Simply enter the credentials which are valid for the team project.

Greg Olsen
Yellow Duck Guy