Error TF31004 connecting VS2012 to TFS

Question

I am trying to setup a new connection to TFS with VS2012. Early on I was able to add my TFS server and, using the Microsoft Git Provider, clone a copy of the remote repository from within Visual Studio. Later, as I was fiddling with things in Team Explorer trying to find the branch I wanted to use, something broke. My local repository remains, but my connection to the remote repository was somehow corrupted, as evidenced with this error:

TF31004: Unexpected error encountered while connecting to Team Foundation Server at http: //my.server.com:8080/tfs. Wait a few minutes and try again. If the problem persists, contact the server administrator ok help

Things I have tried to resolve this:

• Wait and try again (as the error message suggested).
• Restart Visual Studio.
• Reboot my machine.
• Reboot TFS server.
• Use system restore to revert back before I installed msysgit and Microsoft Git Provider, or had attempted to connect to the TFS server.
• Review the MSDN help for the error (see below).
• Search Stack Overflow (found one other related issue but did not seem to apply).
• Tried devenv /ResetSkipPkgs
• Tried devenv /setup
• Re-install Team Explorer for VS2012.
• Clear IE cookies (per this post).
• Clear TFS caches (per this post).

The help page offers these tidbits, but none of them seem likely given that I had, as I said, the connection working at one point:

• The version of Team Foundation running on the local computer does not match the version running on the Team Foundation Server server {name}.
• The server returned HTML content instead of XML content.
• The required Web service on the server could not be found.

Any ideas would be appreciated!

Answer 1

I have had an exactly the same problem.

My solution was to clear all the credentials in the Windows Vault (Credential Manager residing in the Control Panel).

I have no idea why the credentials did get messed up.