Quick links

• Overview
• Installer Notes
• Useful links
• Errors

Overview

Installing Visual Studio Team Foundation (VSTF) when knowing what to do, takes around 5-10 hours, installing without much of a clue (like most of us) can take a couple of frustrating days. Most of the time you are waiting for an installation to complete, have a good book nearby :)
Don't install VSTF if you don't have the time for it, its still a Beta and the installation process is horrible (better than for CTP1, but in no way userfriendly).

First of all: I tried installing Windows 2003 Server to a Virtual PC 2004 and then doing all the steps described in the installer instructions, but it got WAY to slow. I got so many problems I started everything over with Virtual Server 2005, which worked much better and didn't cause any headaches when restarting or closing any remote control window. You can also use VMWare, which is a bit faster, but still you will only get around 50% of the normal performance, read more about this here.

I got everything working with Virtual Server 2005, BUT its so freaking slow, its no fun to use (and you might get some timeouts while installing or creating projects, which may cause trouble). I had to wait up to several minutes until the VSTF server reacted, the overhead for the sql and vstf services is huge. For just checking VSTF out this is fine, but for using it, you should have a fast server.

Only for this reason I would really recomment installing everything on a single extra computer, start from a clean OS and work your way through the installation, if you have enough computers, you might also try the 2 server installation (1 data tier and 1 app tier). Before starting you might also want to set up an Active Directory domain (if you don't have one yet) and the required accounts for Team Foundation Server.
The TFSSetup account must be a domain account and have admin rights at the time of the installation, the TFSService account will work fine for the installation, but you might have to create a new account for the first login on your client machine later on. Install Win2003 and then use VNC to continue working, you will need a lot of copy+pasting, which is much easier to do from your comfortable PC ^^

Installer Notes

• Follow the offical installer instructions, this guide is only an additonal help!
  Use the newest version: dv_VSETInstall-v50428.chm
  Download it here!

• German (or other non english) Win2003 version might have problems later on because of wrong region settings (decimal point . and , confusion in some config files). I suggest installing the English Windows 2003 Standard Server version.
  More info about this issue can be found here.

• Do not install IIS before installing an active directory domain (its better to have that on another comp anyway). If you have IIS or other stuff already installed and ADAM was installed too, you have to remove any ADAM instance.
  If you don't have a working Active Directory somewhere in your network (there shouldn't be any NetLogon errors), simply install Active Directory on your VSTF server first before installing anything else. Then setup the TFSSetup and TFSService there.

• Try out your TFSSetup account (add it to admin group, see installation guide). Change your admin user to a domain user using the Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Computer name page. When setting up your domain user, you might get an error telling you that multiple connections from the same user are not allowed and you can't continue. To fix that open a command window and type net use * /del and answer all questions with Y for Yes, now logging into the domain should work.

• Before starting with any installation (after IIS is working) make sure you do update windows.
  I suggest using Win2003 SP1, this includes most security patches and MSI Installer 3.0 you will need later.
  Tip: Download the damn big SP1 download for your language (I suggest installing the english Win2003 server as said above), you will need this again and again when reinstalling or installing another Win2003 server (especially since this VSTF installation is already frustrating enough ^^).

• After installing Sql Server 2005, create report an extra Application Pool in IIS and move the reports and reportserver websites into it:
  
  • In Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, expand the local computer, right-click Application Pools, point to New, and then click Application Pool.
  • In the Application pool ID box, type the name of the new application pool, Reporting Services.
  • Now set this app pool for both Reports and ReportServer website directories.
  • Restart IIS
  
  
• At this time you might want to backup your system in case something goes wrong later on. Installing Win2003 and Sql2005 do take the most time of this installation process and there isn't much you can do wrong up to this point, so this is a good time to backup.
  Note: There is no System restore point utility in Win2003, you can only backup with the backup utility using the Volume Shadow Copy service or maybe some external tool. The problem is, when you start the Backup utility (select your drive (c) -< properties -> tools -> backup)
  
  You might see the following error (after executing the wizard and if it fails click report):
  Error returned while the creating volume shadow copy: 80042301
  
  This happens because of a Bug with Sql Server 2005 (versions earlier than May) and can be fixed with deleting the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VSS\VssAccessControl
  
  Now you should be able to start the Volume Shadow Copy service and backup your drive. More about this issue can be found here.
  
  Note: The backup of the entire disk (c) requires only ~3.2 GB at this point.
  

• After that http://localhost/reports should work and look like this:
  

  But the site http://localhost/ReportServer/ReportService.asmx might fail with a compliation error:
  Compiler Error Message: CS0234: The type or namespace name 'Xml' does not exist in the namespace 'System' (are you missing an assembly reference?)
  

  • fix the ReportService.asmx error with replacing the <assemblies> section in the <system.web> section of the C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportServer\web.config file:
    
    <assemblies>
    <clear />
    <add assembly="ReportingServicesWebServer" />
    <add assembly="mscorlib" />
    <add assembly="System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />
    <add assembly="System.Configuration, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    <add assembly="System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    <add assembly="System.Data, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />
    <add assembly="System.Web.Services, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    <add assembly="System.Xml, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />
    <add assembly="System.Drawing, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    <add assembly="System.EnterpriseServices, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    <add assembly="System.Web.Mobile, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    </assemblies>

  • Make sure the web.config files for reportserver and reportmanager have full access:
    Change the following line in both web.config files:
    <trust level="Full" originUrl="" />
    Location: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportServer
    and: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportManager

  • Now check if http://localhost/reportServer/Reportservice.asmx is working.
    You should see a list of operations, it looks like this:
    

• If you don't have the SharePoint 2.0 + SP1 Installer, download it here (and save it somewhere, you might need it again):
  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads...bb2b&DisplayLang=en

• Also update your windows again now to patch your SharePoint service (there are security updates).

• After installing sharepoint service, the Reports and ReportServer sites will not work anymore. Exclude the defined paths for the SQL Server Reporting Services Web applications (Reports and ReportServer) to identify areas of the existing URL namespace that should not be managed by Windows SharePoint Services. Do this with the stsadm tool from Sql Server (located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\BIN).
  STSADM.EXE -o addpath -url http://localhost/Reports -type exclusion
  STSADM.EXE -o addpath -url http://localhost/ReportServer -type exclusion
  Both commands should return "Operation successful."

• After that you HAVE to restart windows (to test if the sharepoint stuff is working again)!
  If after restarting a message appears that some service couldn't be started, check out the Events in computer management. Maybe the service did start some time later and everything is fine, but maybe something horrible happend, you should check that out (look for errors in system, I had some errors with W32Time and cryptsvc, but the installation worked fine anyway).

• Veryfy that http://localhost/reports and http://localhost/ReportServer/ReportService.asmx work again.

• Before starting the VSTF installation, logon with your TFSSETUP account (see above if this is the first time) and continue with that user!

• Now check if all services (Analysis Server, Report Server, SharePoint timer service, Sql Server, Sql Server Agent and MSSQL SharePoint Service) are running. Check the sql services also with the SQL Server Service Manager tool in the traybar, everything should be running.
  Then check http://localhost/, http://localhost/Reports/ and
  http://localhost/ReportServer/ReportServices.asmx.
  Maybe also check http://localhost/ReportServer/ which must show an empty list looking like this:
  

• This is another good time to do a backup of your system in case something goes wrong with the installation (since the rollback doesn't really work and your PC can become messed up in case of an installation failure).
  Unfortunatly Volume Shadow Copy failed again at my computer with the following message:
  > Volume shadow copy creation: Attempt 1.
  > "MSDEWriter" has reported an error 0x800423f4. This is part of System State. The backup cannot continue.
  > Error returned while creating the volume shadow copy:800423f4
  I gave it up, but maybe you can resolve that. Anyway, my last backup was just 1 step before that and I used that (when VSTF failed).

• Ok, if everything is up and running, lets start installing VSTF (follow the rest of the offical Guide).
  

• Creating a project on the client might fail with a timeout (Rosetta stuff timed out) if the server is busy, this happend to me twice, so I suggest creating your first project directly on the server (with VS2005, just install the client tier). If the project creation failed on your client, just do it again with the same settings on the server and you should be fine (else you will have an unfinished project, not very pretty).

• Little tip at the end: You need a user to create anything in VSTF, if you are using VS2005 Beta2, just use "Run as" and enter your TFSSetup account, now create a new project and create a user for you as described in the official guide (you need a active directory account):
  
  • On the Team menu, point to Team Foundation Server Settings, and then click Groups.
  • In the Global Groups dialog box, select the group you want to add users to, and then click Properties.
  • In the Team Foundation Server Group Properties dialog box, on the Members tab, select Windows User or Group, and then click Add.
  • In the Select User Names or Groups dialog box, enter the domain name and username of the users you want to add.
  Now close VS2005 Beta2 and log on with your new account.

• Time to read the Process Guidance, fill data into your project and start working :)
  

Useful Links

• http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2882

• http://blogs.msdn.com/askburton/archive/2005/05/04/414683.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/askburton/archive/2005/01/27/362083.aspx
• http://robz.homedns.org:8080/blog/archive/2005/04/24/742.aspx
• http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2895
• http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=4203
• http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3213

Errors

• I only needed this one time because something went wrong with SharePoint, you might want to skip this if everything is working fine. Also use this if the first attempt failed and you try again reinstalling (after restoring the pre VSTF installation state):

• If http://localhost/ site is not working (it should point to the team web site, same as http://localhost/Reports/), make sure the following line exists in the HttpModules section of C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\web.config:
  <add name="Session" type="System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule" />
  (That entry will already exist, but it is commented out, remove the <!-- and --> comment tags.)
  In addition to adding the session state module, you must also enable session state for the pages element by changing the enableSessionState attribute from false to true. The entry in the configuration files should look like the following:
  <pages enableSessionState="true" enableViewState="true" enableViewStateMac="true"
  validateRequest="false" />

• Finally (this is optional, but it doesn't hurt), use the rsactivate utility to activate the local instance of Reporting Services. You need to install Administrative Tools and Utilities as part of Reporting Services setup in order to use the rsactivate utility. By default, rsactivate is located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\Binn. If you installed your report server to the default location, run the following at the command prompt:
  rsactivate -c "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Reporting
  Services\ReportServer\RSReportServer.config"

• I would also restart the System now (again) if you did the past 3 steps to make sure all services start up correctly.

VSTF Installer Abort Errors:

• Issue: Setup fails when installing ADAM (Active Directory Application Mode).
  This happend for me because I failed to logon with TFSService and continued installing with TFSSetup. I guess Active Directory authentication failed, there were also a lot of NetLogon errors in the system event log (no domain server found stuff).

  After installing Active Directory correctly and no more NetLogon errors the installation succeeded finally. If you install Active Directory after IIS, Sql Server 2005 and SharePoint, make sure the http://localhost/Reports and http://localhost/ReportServer/ReportService.asmx work. You might have to adjust the security settings for some folders for the network service used for this websites on the following folders: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET, C:\Windows\Temp and maybe more, check out the site error for additional dependencies.

• Error 26xxx (I don't remember the exact number anymore, 26201, 26202, 26204 or so):
  I had them only in my first try and the reason was wrong order of installing SharePoint services stuffand not putting it in a seperate app pool, worked after fixing that. Google for your error if it is not sharepoint causing this trouble.
• Error 32000 (most common)
  The full error is most likely: "Error 32000: The command line "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Enterprise Server\BISIISDIR\sdk\bin\BisSubscribe/exe" /eventType ArtifactChangedEvent /userid Domain\TFSSERVICE /deliveryType Soap /Address http://localhost:8080/Currituck/BisService.asmx" returned non zero value: 1."
  
  • BISIIS stuff, this is the error I had the most time when installing, retry did help for timeout issues, but did not help when something else was wrong.
    It usually means something above failed and you are in trouble (either you did not follow some of the tips or there is something wrong with some web service components, check the installation log for more details and search for help at google and http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/).
  • Basically check if sql stuff (4 services) are running and localhost/reports and /reportserver do work without errors.
  • Check out the Useful links section.

• The only way reinstalling worked for me in the first try was to completly reinstall windows 2003 OR using a backup (described above) to restore a previous disk drive state. The other suggestions here might work too, but I didn't got them working, so I won't recomment them.
• This might also work: For Reinstall delete any vstf directories, uninstall ADAM, remove TFSService from security in SQL manager and delete all VSFT databases.
• My TFSService account didn't work for my second install so I kept retrying and created a new account, it did not work either (maybe some kind of AD login error). Trying to fix this I logged out with TFSSetup and logged on with that account (TFSService) and then logged out and used TFSSetup again to install. That didn't help, I continued using a backup and started over (at least that worked ^^).
  See above for the Active Directory issue (which was the cause for this problem).
• Then installing worked until I got some error with a temp file, then ADAM install failed, after I removed some files, that worked, but then the MSI installer failed with some HRESULT with not much help about it when searching google.
  Instead continuing pocking around for more hours I just reinstalled Win2003 and started over using my plan here, then finally everything worked. The full reinstall did take less time than fixing all those errors, which is really annoying and frustrating. Reinstalling works most of the time by itself, you just have to press some buttons and wait for the most time.

Quick links

• About Lost Squadron
• Todays topic
• Dvorak keyboard layout
• CountMostUsedKeys tool
• Own keyboard layout
• Useful links

About Lost Squadron

Currently we at exDream have finally started working on the next project and will produce a nice graphic demo/prototype in the next 3 month. I will try to sneak in a couple of screenshots of it from time to time.

Todays topic

We talked a bit about other keyboard layouts like Dvorak, which is way more effective and relaxing than any qwerty layout, but I got no free time back then. You will need around a week to learn to type at low speeds and at least a month to get back to a better typing speed.

Dvorak

After Arena Wars was finished last year I got finally some time to start learning Dvorak. Dvorak seems very nice (see the links below for additional information) and has a lot of advantages for typing "normal" text (but some people exaggerate "a little").

Anyway, while playing around with Dvorak (us default layout) I really found some things VERY annoying, especially for coding and playing games:

• It is fairly hard to learn a new layout and getting really back to the old speed again. Additionally hotkeys you typical need on a computer are totally crazy and unusable. Hard to learn when you used QWERTY all your life, learning can be done in a week or so, but really being able to get back to your old speed can take months (and is painful).
• Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V can't be used as easy. I always use my left hand while my right hand can use the mouse, especially for browsing, code comparing, getting text from one place to another, etc. and all this happens VERY often! I know you can also use Shift+Insert, Ctrl+Insert, Shift+Delete, but these shortkeys are just plain unuseable, maybe for lefties, but the keys still suck.
• Hotkeys can't be used the way they used to be, for some games its possible to change hotkeys, for others not (like starcraft, at least its not easy to change) This does not only apply to games, but also a lot for applications, especially when you remembered just the location where to press and not the name of the hotkey, e.g. when using photoshop, you have to re-learn the hotkeys. Also stuff like Ctrl+S, Ctrl+O, Ctrl+F, Ctrl+R, etc. is usually remembered by the positions on the keyboard and not by the key and relearning this keys is pretty hard!
• Dvorak is optimized for typical english words, but not for programming, some keys are even worse than the german keyboard layout. But what I really don't like is the way Dvorak handles symbols like []{};:?+-/, etc.
  Its not that QWERTY is really good for coding, especially when typing stuff like () or -, = or +, but overall it performs still better than Dvorak (counting only symbols).

I've also collected some interessting facts when comparing Dvorak and QWERTY considering c#/c++/java code. Click this link to test it yourself.

• When pasting random stuff into the Keyboard Compare Applet, QWERTY performs almost twice as good as Dvorak (Note: We are not random key generators, usually we type text or code which makes sense ^^).
• When just pasting c# code stuff without much text like
  if ( a == 0 )
  {
  doIt( a!=0?a:0 );
  } // if
  QWERTY still outperforms Dvorak, which can't be good!

I created my own keyboard layout to solve all the problems (yeah, now its getting real geeky), but I based it on the Dvorak layout, which is really efficient and nice for typing "normal" text (which is still required a lot, even by crazy coders).
To solve the Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V problem I simply moved that keys to the QWERTY position and exchange the other keys accordingly. This didn't matter much because there isn't much of a difference between X,C,V and Q,J,K according to the key usage (see below).

At this time I was already using Dvorak for about a week or two and had spend a lot of effort into learning and thinking about improvement, I wanted a perfect solution. I checked typical c# and c++ code and wrote a program to count how often each key is used. Now I got the most important keys and asigned the best spot for each symbol using the distance (see the Keyboard Compare Applet) and how much it is used. Using shift is also a major impact IMO, especially when keys are far away.

So I wrote a little test program to count the used keys in all my *.cs files in my code folder, check out the results below.

Screenshot of the program (I improved it yesterday, it was a console tool before):

abi/blog/CountMostUsedKeys.zip">Download the CountMostUsedKeys program.

abi/blog/CountMostUsedKeys_src.zip">And the source code for anyone interessted
(may be useful if you want to write some line count tool yourself)


CountMostUsedKeys results:
Search mode=Everything, File type=*.cs, Directory=C:\code\
Number of files=4041, Number of lines=2031908, Number of keys=67829575

Same results without space and letters, very useful to assign the most important symbol keys:
Search mode=ExceptLetters

Based on that I created my own keyboard layout, which was updated 9 times until I was happy with it.

Version 1 looked like this (pretty much like dvorak, some cosmetic changes at the right side):

Version 2: The next thing I did was moved the Z X C V keys back and copied some keys around, () are moved to normal keys, () is used much more than [] or {}.

In Version 3-6 I tried moving some keys around based on the distance and effectiveness, but I moved most of them back because they felt really uncomfortable and were bad for hotkeys. One bigger change was moving the . , () keys back down, which improves typing speed a lot because we really need more keys on the left side when using the mouse with the right hand and when typing the right hand can easily handle most of the symbol keys on the right side.

Version 7 was pretty much the final version, I trained this version a week and except some minor cosmetic changes in the upper row everything stayed this way till the last version:

Version 8 and 9 changed only the positions of J D F K B and the ? | and + - keys, at first I didn't like the position for b at the right side, but b is used a lot in combination with vocal keys unlike j, it is much better to have it on the right side. The + - key on the upper left is now the same as the key on the lower right (which is not present on all keyboards).

This is the final Version 9 I am using for nearly 6 months now, I got up to my old speed in the first 1-2 months and now I type even faster and more relaxed than before (maybe around 400 keystrokes per minute for normal text if I try hard). I wouldn't suggest changing your keyboard layout just because you might be a little faster with Dvorak or my keyboard layout, I think the comfortablity is at least as important as the speed. In my option the greatest thing about my keyboard layout (or dvorak for normal text) is the fact you can type most of the time without moving your fingers much (90% of the most used keys are directly on the center row).

abi/blog/abiKeyboardV9.zip">Download AbiKeyboardV9 installer

I was not trying to create the best keyboard layout ever or to make Dvorak obsolete, I just want to improve it for me and other interessted programmer. If you get started with Dvorak or my keyboard layout you should use some keyboard training tool and spend a couple of hours (but not much longer) each day training it. I found this website very useful: Learning Dvorak

The main reason I wrote this article now was the nagging of some people I told about this and who wanted to know more, so keep nagging if you want to see articles like this :)

If you got comments or some ideas to improve this even more, let me now!

Useful links