Awhile ago I found myself trying to install Team Foundation Server. It was before I had a blog, but I thought I would share my thoughts.

I'm not usually a guy to read the instruction manual. It tends to fall to the wayside in favor of diving right in to whatever I am doing. The same held true for the TFS install. I figured, I've installed dozens of Microsoft products, how hard could this be? And so I fired up the installer. It wasn't long before I started getting error messages, like "Error 32000.The Commandline '"D:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\Bin\Stsadm.exe" ...' returned non-zero value"…. I took the syntax and typed it into the command prompt, and got a more explicit message saying that the STS_Contant_TFS.mdf file already existed. This happened because I had tried to install STS several times, using different methods (the cmd line option using the syntax in the Install CHM is the best), and had left a residual MDF/LDF file in the SQL data directory.

So I deleted the residual files, dug deeper into the error logs, and fiddled with IIS settings and SharePoint settings and SQL settings. TFS still wouldn't install. I uninstalled SharePoint and reinstalled SharePoint, and deleted databases and recreated databases, and Googled everything.

I finally hung my head low and accepted that maybe the documentation could have a tidbit of good advice. And browsing through the documentation is where I found my answer, literally. I found that the TFS team had included a setup answer file. So I followed the setup checklist step by step, and using the answer file I was successful with the install, and have been happily teaming away ever since. I was STOKED! Answer files are AWESOME!

Long story short, RTM.

Oh, leave out the PID in the answer file for MSDN versions.