How to Remove a Workspace from Team Foundation Server 2008 [#TFS #dotnetdev]

Recently I ended up having a workspace conflict in Team Foundation since it paired another user’s name with my machine’s name, and then when I attempted to establish a new workspace, it complained with a message like:

The working folder C:\dev\MyWorkingFolder is already in use by the workspace MYMACHINENAME;otherguy on computer MYMACHINENAME.

So after a fair amount of research, I did the following:

Launch the command line prompt (Start Menu >> type “cmd” into the Search text box, hit Enter).

Navigate to “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE”, using:

CD "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE"

List the other user’s workspaces using the tf workspaces command:

tf workspaces /owner:otherguy

Find and note the offending workspace (in this case, it’s a workspace with my machine name), and then delete it using the tf workspace command:

tf workspace /delete MYMACHINENAME;YOURDOMAIN\otherguy

That did it for me, your mileage may vary, but hopefully this will prove helpful to someone in the future…

Thanks also to this post.