Reinstalling Team Foundation Server after Expiration
Yesterday I fell victim to a trial edition of Team Foundation Server rudely up and expiring. Unfortunately there wasn’t a repair option under “Add remove programs” to turn it into workgroup mode. And I didn’t have easy access to the internet to grab Brian Harry’s Team Foundation Server TFSVersionDetection.exe utility to extend the expiration period -and I needed my server back asap. So I took a deep breath and uninstalled Team Foundation Server and reinstalled it in Workgroup mode. I must admit fifteen minutes later, after the 4 minute removal and 10 minute installation I didn’t really expect much- I would have been happy with the server just to work! So it was a very pleasant surprise that all the projects and settings had been preserved in the SQL Server.
To the point even the builds had been preserved….
Am I advocating uninstalling Team Foundation Server to extend it or change it to Workgroup mode- absolutely not!
But I thought it would be useful to know what would happen if you did have to go through this process- or if you expect the uninstall/reinstall process to clean the slate on the computer this is not a good mechanism.
