title: Visual Studio 2008: Can't connect to known good TFS 2010
body: <p>A freshly installed TFS 2010 is at <code>http://serverX:8080/tfs</code>. </p>
  
  <p>A Windows 7 developer machine with VS 2008 Pro SP1 and the VS2008 Team Explorer (<strong>no SP</strong>). The <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9E40A5B6-DA41-43A2-A06D-3CEE196BFE3D&amp;displaylang=en" rel="noreferrer">TFS 2008 Service Pack 1</a> didn't work for me - "None of the products that are addressed by this software update are installed on this computer."</p>
  
  <p>The developer machine is able to browse the TFS site at the above URL.</p>
  
  <p><strong>The Issue</strong> is around trying to add the TFS server into the Team Explorer window in Visual Studio 2008. Here's a screenshot showing the error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>unable to connect to this Team Foundation Server. Possible reasons for failure include: The Team Foundation Server name, port number or protocol is incorrect. The Team Foundation Server is offline. Password is expired or incorrect.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>The TFS server is up and running properly. Firewall ports are open, and <strong>is accessible via the browser</strong> on the dev machine!!</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/gLCxE.png" alt="alt text">
  <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/gLCxE.png" rel="noreferrer">larger image</a></p>
  
  <p><strong>Question</strong>: how can you connect from VS 2008 Pro to a TFS 2010 server?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Resolution</strong></p>
  
  <p>Here's how I solved this problem:</p>
  
  <p><strong>Installations</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>install Visual Studio 2008</li>
  <li>install <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=0ed12659-3d41-4420-bbb0-a46e51bfca86&amp;displaylang=en" rel="noreferrer">VS 2008 Team Explorer</a> as above.</li>
  <li>re-install <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=FBEE1648-7106-44A7-9649-6D9F6D58056E&amp;displaylang=en" rel="noreferrer">VS 2008 Service Pack 1</a></li>
  <li>install the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=CF13EA45-D17B-4EDC-8E6C-6C5B208EC54D&amp;displaylang=en" rel="noreferrer">Visual Studio Team System 2008 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010</a>  (VS90SP1-KB974558-x86.exe)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><strong>Config</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>when adding a TFS server to Team Explorer, you <strong>MUST</strong> specify the URL as such:
  <code>http://[tfsserver]:[port]/[vdir]/[projectCollection]</code></li>
  <li>in my case above, it was <code>http://serverX:8080/tfs/AppDev-TestProject</code></li>
  <li>you cannot simply add the TFS server name and have VS look for all Project Collections on the server. TFS 2010 has a new URL (by default) and VS 2008 doesn't recognize how to gather that list.</li>
  </ul>