Posts

Whist configuring a new TFS2010 server I got the error TF255115: The following service did not start: TfsJobAgent. Cannot start service TfsJobAgent on computer ‘’. This was identical to the thread on MSDN and it turned out my problem was similar. I was installing TFS onto drive D:APPS, not the usual C:PROGRAM FILE. The problem was the User group did not have the default Read & Execute, List Folder Contents and Read rights on the D:APPS directory and sub directory, the right all users have on C:PROGRAM FILES. ...

When your PC reaches the point that MSI cannot connect to the Install Service you know it is time to repave the PC. This is the time to you have to try remember what you installed on the PC, your license codes and how you actually got things to work. So going through this process this week all went OK until I tried to remember how I handled bitlockered VHDs. ...

I am speaking at the BCS group in Edinburgh on the 11th of May in Agile and Lean Methods. For more details see http://edinburgh.bcs.org.uk/events/2010-11/110511.htm

Last year I presented at Microsoft UK’s Techdays on Visual Studio 2010 Lab Management and the session was videoed. I recently tried to refer someone to this recording and I found that the Techdays site had been rebuilt for this years event and I could not find the video. Well after a bit of searching I found it on MSN at Putting some Testing into your TFS Build Process ...

Next Tuesday lunchtime (12th Apr 2011 1pm) I will be doing a webcast on on ‘Lab Management and Automated Build’. I will be looking at the build options in TFS and also how they can be extended with Lab Management. The event is free to attend you just need to register at http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-gb/visual-studio-events

Whist recently installing a TFS 2010 system onto a single box server, that was also a domain controller, I had a problem that though everything seemed in order I could not view my reporting services based reports in either SharePoint or directly from the http://myserver/reports interface. During the installation I had verified I had the correct password for my [domain]tfsreports account used to run the reports. If went to the http://myserver/reports page and edited the TFS2010ReportsDs or TFS2010OlapReportDS and tried to test the [domain]tfsreports login it failed. However, if I swapped to the [domain]administrator all was fine and my reports worked. ...

I posted a while ago about common confusion I had seen with Lab Management. We I have recently managed to get myself completely confused whilst working with Lab Management. It turns out the issue was so obvious I managed to miss it for hours, but as usual I learnt a good deal whilst trying to troubleshoot my stupidity. I have a Lab Management system linked up to a a Team Project Collection (TPC). In this TPC there is a Team Project used for SharePoint development and on my Lab Management system I have an environment to allow testing of the SharePoint products. I setup a new Team Project in this TPC. In the new project I created a new MVC solution and created an automated build, which all worked fine. ...

IIS Express is a great addition to the tools for .NET web developers; it allow a slightly cut down copy of IIS 7.5 to be run without administrative privileges on a developer’s PC. This means we can hopefully get away from the problems associated by either Using Cassini – which is not IIS and does not do any clever Using full IIS which means Visual Studio has to run as administrator to debug it and also causes source control issues when a project is shared between multiple developers (their IIS setup must match up) If you install Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and IIS express you now get a new option, that is to use IIS express as your web server. This, via a few clicks, can be configured for SSL and should address 90%+ of the needs of most developers. Once a project is set to use IIS express the key properties are set via the VS Property windows ...

I got round to installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1 on my laptop last night; well I started last night via the Web Platform Installer method. It downloaded the bits fast but sat for ages on the first step, installing the actual service pack. There was no obvious activity on the CPU or disk. In the end I gave waiting and went to bed. I was pleased to see it was finished this morning. ...

If you try to create an automated TFS build of a Windows Phone 7 Silverlight application on a ‘default installed’ build agent you will see errors along the lines of The imported project “C:Program FilesMSBuildMicrosoftSilverlight for Phonev4.0Microsoft.Silverlight.WindowsPhone.Overrides.targets” was not found. Confirm that the path in the declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk. This is because the PC your build agent is running on does not have the WP7 SDK installed. ...