This post is going to be my periodically updated list of answers to questions/problems that I hear about.  I'll get right to it...

Last updated 12/2/08

1) Login problems with the TFS Windows Shell Extension - Right now the shell extension only supports contact TFS with your default Windows credentials (using integrated authentication).  This won't work in extranet scenarios (or any other where you can't use integrated auth).  We plan to add support for enabling you to explicitly provide your user name & password for TFS in the next Power Tools release.

I've discovered that you can use stored credentials to have Windows automatically provide your username and password.

Steps (Windows Vista)

  1. Control Panel, User Accounts, User Accounts (again);
  2. Click “Manage your network passwords” (“Tasks” list on the left);
  3. In the “Stored User Names and Password” dialog, click Add;
  4. Type in your CodePlex (or any other TFS server for that matter)
    1. Add only the host name in the “Log on to” field;
    2. Type username in the “domain\username” format;
    3. Select “A Windows logon credential” radio button.

Steps (Windows XP)

  1. Control Panel, User Accounts, Advanced tab
  2. Click Manage Passwords
  3. Click Add
  4. Enter the server name, user name and password.

Apparently you need to do this while you are logged in with an admin account (on Vista).  Also, you may need to reboot to have this take effect for the Windows Shell Extension.

2) Server scoped groups don't work in Team Members - We tested Project scoped groups and Windows (local and AD) groups but didn't get around to testing server scoped groups before we shipped this release.  We'll add that for the next release.  In the mean time, don't use them with Team Members.

3) VS and Communicator (or other IM system) must be running at the same permission level - If you run VS elevated to "Administrator" using UAC on Vista or Win2K8, you must run Communicator the same way.  This is due to security restrictions in COM that prevent processes at different levels of permission from communicating with COM.  If you don't run them at the same permission level, you will see an error - I can't remember what it says but it's an ugly COM activation error and I'll post it when I run across it again.

4) Team members inheritance can't be reestablished - If you create team settings for a sub team, there-by overriding the settings for the parent team, you can't remove them and reestablish the inheritance.  There's two steps you have to do to deal with this.  First, go into the Source Control Explorer and delete the team definition XML file in $/<Team Project>/TeamProjectConfig/Teams.  Then you have to delete the config file from the clients (this is a bug - it should be auto deleted).  The config file will be in c:\users\<user>\appdata\local\microsoft\team foundation\2.0\Cache\<server guid>\<Team Project>\TeamProjectConfig\Teams

5) Here's a great blog post on options for unattended install: http://myvstsblog.com/addons-and-extras/unattended-install-of-tfs-2008-october-power-tools/

Brian