TF50605: There was an error looking up the SID for OLD-DOMAIN\CCNETNIGHTLYBUILD.

In order to delete the workspace, we need to remap it to a valid user account. Here’s the process to do just that.

Firstly, we should list the workspaces on this computer we’re having problems with (in this case, BUILDSERVER01).

C:\>tf workspaces /owner:* /server:http://tfs-server:8080 | findstr BUILDSERVER01
Workspace		Owner				Computer	Comment
----------------------- ------------------------------- --------------- -------------------------------
BUILDSERVER01		saCCNetNightly			BUILDSERVER01	Temporary CruiseControl.NET Wo
BUILDSERVER01		OLD-DOMAIN\CCNETNIGHTLYBUILD	BUILDSERVER01 	Temporary CruiseControl.NET Wo
BUILDSERVER01		saCCNetNightly			BUILDSERVER01

We may as well attempt to delete the workspace, though the process is likely to fail as it wont be able to resolve the SID if the domain is no longer available.

C:\>tf workspace /delete /server:http://tfs-server:8080 BUILDSERVER01;OLD-DOMAIN\CCNETNIGHTLYBUILD
TF50605: There was an error looking up the SID for OLD-DOMAI\CCNETNIGHTLYBUILD.

At this point, we need to open up the TfsVersionControl table and manually point the workspaces to a valid identity. The first stage is to identify the ID of the missing account:

SELECT IdentityId FROM tfsVersionControl.tbl_Identity WHERE (DisplayName LIKE 'OLD-DOMAIN\CCNETNIGHTLYBUILD')

Now that we have the ID, we can locate the workspaces the owner has on the server we’re having problems with.

SELECT WorkspaceId, OwnerId, WorkspaceName FROM tfsVersionControl.tbl_Workspace WHERE (OwnerId = 311) AND (Computer = 'BUILDSERVER01')

We should now update the tfsVersionControl.tbl_Workspace table with a valid IdentityId from the tfsVersionControl.tbl_Identity table. Once that’s done, try the delete command again:

C:\>tf workspace /delete /server:http://tfs-server:8080 "BUILDSERVER01;Dave Hope"
A deleted workspace cannot be recovered.
Workspace 'BUILDSERVER01;Dave Hope' on server 'http://tfs-server:8080' has 0 pending change(s).
Are you sure you want to delete the workspace? (Yes/No) Yes

And hey presto, the workspace is gone.

The documentation may at first seem fairly daunting just by the length of it, but most of it is just cretinous things like how to backup and restore databases. Moving a TFS server is actually not all that bad.

That said, there are some mistakes in the current version of the microsoft documentation which i’ll correct below

When you come to restore the report server Step 19 should say:

SetupWarehouse.exe -o -s newDataTierServerName -d newTeamFoundationDataWarehouseName \
-c warehouseschema.xml -ra TFSReportServiceAccount -a TFSServiceAccount \
-mturl http://newTeamFoundationSercer:8080

There are parts when you’re asked to do various things to the TFS & WSS websites, if you get an error make sure the application pool for that website is started. Microsoft tell you to stop them and forget to tell you to start them again.

That translates to “DDSetStatus:The content app pool must be configured to use the TFS service account” in the MSI log file if you enable logging.

After an hour of battling with it and googling with no real results other than “reinstall” (not an option) I solved my problems by doing the following:

Ensure all Sts* and TFS* app pools run under the account you want TFS to run under (e.g. NWTRADERS.MSFT\TeamServer) and ensure the MsiProperty.INI (located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server – ENU) has the correct values for VSTF_RS_USERID and VSTF_DOMAIN. E.g.:VSTF_RS_USERID=TeamServer
VSTF_DOMAIN=NWTRADERS.MSFT

This occurred in our setup because we’d intially used local SAM accounts to run the services for TFS and later migrated to AD ones. Even if you run the TFSAdminUtil MsiProperty.INI doesn’t get updated. Neat, eh?