Arogl Darthu's Blog

Unable to connect to this Team Foundation Server...

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 pops up a nice dialog with three possible reasons for failure:

• The Team Foundation Server name, port number or protocol is incorrect.
• The Team Foundation Server is offline.
• Password is expired or incorrect.

They should have added: Your machine.config contains an error. In this case a coworker added an appSettings section to the machine.config. He added valid xml; no errors at all. So why blame the config settings you might ask...

Well, apparently the appSettings node must be located below the configSections node. If not, all kind of strange things (like not being able to connect to TFS) will occur.

OK, I admit... It's been a while since I put together a PC. But this is really too weird. At startup, even before having an OS installed, there was a tremendous delay when the BIOS tried to detect the IDE devices. Just two, a hard disk drive on the primary and a CDROM on the secondary. How hard can that be to detect?

Well appearently very hard, because the waiting started to bother me from the first boot I had to make. So you start tweaking the BIOS settings. The BIOS Optimization Guide seemed a good place to start. But allas, whatever I tried it was of no use.

Hours later, after searching the web for known issues with my drives and/or mobo, I finally keyed the right phrase into google and asked 'slow boot in bios'. And there my answer was, only one click and some scrolling away. Googles first result, opened a discussion thread called 'Slow Booting' and hidden under 'Response Number 6' I found what I was looking for.

Hold on: the jumpers on the IDE devices need to be set to cable select. The setting master is not good enough anymore. Why, why, WHY!?

Darn... Today I got tagged. By no other than Guido, my dear colleague. I didn't know what tagging is all about, but Guido explains it quite well in his article.

Appearently it's a new digital kind of chain-letter, and I profoundly dislike chain letters... So sorry guys, I'm not going to bother others with this 'tagging' thing. I will however put five topics in this entry that I would normally not post in this blog:

1. Spare time wil grow scarce this year, as I'm getting married on the first of May. If you can read Dutch, please see Twan en Marieke.
2. In July 2005 I heard the most aweful words uttered ever: "You're mom has malicious cancer". She is a very strong woman and she will not easily give up. She will fight this cancer till the very last. Hopefully she'll be around to witness our wedding...
3. Luckily good things happen as well: on October 10th 2006 my sister (Trix) gave birth to a son, Tygo. My first cousin, and many more to come? I have to say it's very nice to hold such an adorable fellow like Tygo in your arms.
4. I'm always on somekind of diet. Which means none of them really work for me...
   When my contract at a client of ours finished, my coworkers there deemed it suitable to, let's say, stimulate me. Thanks go out to Anton, Jos, Guido and many others for handing me a great book by the editor-in-Chief of Men's Health, David Zinczenko: The Abs Diet.
5. Actually there is only one computer game I like (very, very much). Just wish I had more time to play it. I signed up with a cool, no strings attached, guild: the Munchkins of the Apocalypse.