Error TF400129: Verifying that the team project collection has space for new system fields when upgrading TFS to 2012.2

Whist testing an upgrade of TFS 2010 to TFS 2012.2 I was getting a number of verification errors in the TFS configuration upgrade wizard. They were all TF400129 based such as

TF400129: Verifying that the team project collection has space for new system fields

but also mention models and schema.

A quick search threw up this thread on the subject, but on checking the DB tables I could see my problem was all together more basic. The thread talked of TPCs in incorrect states. In my case I had been provided with an empty DB, so TFS could find not tables at all. So I suppose the error message was a bit too specific, should have been ‘DB is empty!!!!’ error. Once I got a valid file backup restored for the TPC in question all was ok.

A bit more digging showed that I could also see an error if I issued the command

tfsconfig remapdbs /sqlinstances:TFS1 /databaseName:TFS1;Tfs_Configuration

As this too reported it could not find a DB it was expecting.

So the tip is make sure you really have the Dbs restored you think you have.