Troubleshooting Installation of Team Foundation Server

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Below is a list of common problems that can occur while installing Team Foundation Server, as well as suggestions for resolving these problems.

 

The most common reasons for an installation of Team Foundation Server to fail are:

  • You do not have enough disk space to perform the installation.

    • Solution:  Clear enough disk space on your machine to complete the installation, then retry.  The download page should give a clear indication of how much space is required.

  • Not all components from a previous installation were completely removed.

    • Solution: Check Add/Remove Programs to see if there is an entry for the previous installation.  If there is, uninstall it.  If there is no entry, you may want to try using an msiexec command to uninstall it (this requires searching your package cache for packages associated with the installation, which can be tedious).  Then retry your installation.

  • A network connection or connection to a file directory was lost while the installation was trying to move files to the disk.

    • Solution: Re-establish your connections and retry the installation.

  • You started the installation while logged on with an account that is not a member of the Administrators group on the local computer.

    • Solution:  Add the user account to the Administrators group on the local computer, or log on as a user that is already a member of that group; then retry the installation.

  • The hardware or software the machine uses is incompatible with the product being installed.

    • Solution:  Remove or replace the incompatible software or hardware.

  • The ISO image file is bad. This problem almost always involves a trial edition of Team Foundation Server.

    • Solution:  Obtain a new ISO image file and retry the installation.

 

You may also want to examine the installation log files for insight into why the install failed.  There should be one log file for each MSI installed (or attempted), as well as one for the TFS bootstrapper; all are titled in the form of "dd_tfs_server_<timedatestamp>*.log" and located in the server's AppData folder.  Search for lines that start with the tag, "[Error]" or scroll to the bottom of the log to view the most recent activity.

If these suggestions do not resolve the problem you are seeing, please try re-running the installation once again.  Should the installation fail, take careful note of any errors you are seeing and then contact customer support.