Today, I went to add a new team project to TFS. I did the usual steps by giving it a name and choosing the template type (not really relevant to me since I’m a solo programmer). Visual Studio worked for a bit, then failed with the following error in the log file:
Event Description: TF30162: Task "LinkTypes" from Group "WorkItemTracking" failed
Exception Type: Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.PcwException
Exception Message: Page not found.
The Internet had plenty of advice to resolve TF30162 errors, but nothing useful for the specific LinkTypes error. The only suggestion was to reload the project templates. I was not able to do that because in TFS 2012, those templates are locked and unable to be uploaded and overwritten.
So I attempted a Repair install of TFS 2012. That had no effect
I then made sure I was on the latest version of TFS, so I installed Update 4. My scrum project template went from 2.0 to 2.2, but I still got the exact same error.
I then tried to create a new Project Collection and create a team project in that. Still, no change.
Then I did a repair install on Visual Studio 2015. This took a very long time and required two restarts. And after that, no improvement.
So far, I’ve eliminated the TFS binaries, the TFS database, and the VS binaries. There’s only one element left – IIS. And that one seems to have potential because of the PageNotFound error.
Poking around the IIS log files, there’s entries in there like this:
2017-01-09 14:27:23 ::1 GET /tfs/_apis/connectionData connectOptions=IncludeServices&lastChangeId=-1&lastChangeId64=-1 8080 MicrosoftAccount\myaccount@domain.com ::1 VSServices/14.98.25331.0+(devenv.exe+,Pro,+SKU:31) – 404 0 0 1719
Looking at IIS log files prior to when my problem happened, this 404 error has happened before, too. but there was also other calls to the service like:
2016-03-25 12:43:46 ::1 OPTIONS /tfs/defaultcollection/_apis/ – 8080 MicrosoftAccount\myaccount@domain.com ::1 Team+Foundation+(devenv.exe,+14.0.24712.0,+Pro,+SKU:31)+VSServices/14.0.24712.0+(devenv.exe+,Pro,+SKU:31) – 404 0 0 8
Two suspects come up in Internet searches: Git and IIS plugins. Disabling some of the plugins in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 11.0\Application Tier\Web Services\bin\Plugins made no difference.
At this point, I suspect an incompatibility between VS2015 and TFS 2012, so I upgrade my TFS install to 2015. What else could it be? A call is being made to a REST service that doesn’t exist, or is different enough that the inbound parameters don’t match up. This TFS upgrade requires SQLExpress to be upgraded as well. The rabbit hole keeps going deeper and deeper.
After that entire install and restart, I was finally able to create a new Team Project. The new default project template is “Agile”, not that I care much.
So, the short solution for my error: Upgrade TFS from 2012 to 2015. It must’ve become incompatible after a VS update somewhere along the way.