Login error: unknown username or invalid password

Question

We are launching Visual Studio 2012 and Team Foundation Server 2012. In the Team Explorer window, I can successfully connect to our TFS environment. However, when I select the "Security" link in Team Project or Team Project Collection, I get the message "Team Foundation Server: Login failed: unknown username or invalid password."

I did not find a log file or anything in any event viewer file that helps debug this problem.

• Is there a log file that I can find that contains some “hints” so that there is a connection problem?
• Where are your credentials stored on your language machine that are used to create the connection group?

Answer 1

We realized that the main reason for this problem is that Visual Studio is trying to open a browser using the same credentials as it used to connect to TFS. If these credentials are not allowed to start processes on your computer (I suspect that in your case its users are in a domain in a different domain that the client’s domain does not trust), then opening the browser will fail. This explains why you can hit these URLs using a browser instance that opens using your own credentials. This will be fixed in a future version of visual studio.

Answer 2

In TFS 2012, the project permissions and settings management interface has largely moved to Team Web Access .

When you click any of the following settings from Team Explorer 2012, you will receive the error message "Login error: unknown username or invalid password":

• Team Building> Security

• National Team Gathering> Group Memberships

• Team project> Security

• Team Project> Group Membership

• Team project> Work area

• Team project> Work item iteration

• Team project> Project alerts

Answer 3

I have the same problem. To fix (temporarily), you must start VS 2012 with this command:

C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /netonly /user:{domain\loginname} "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" 

Change {domain \ loginname} to the domain and login name to your tfs domain account. The console will ask for your password and everything works!

Answer 4

I also had the same issue with TFS. I found a solution for this. You must reassign your workspaces to your PC or to a remote server. If you have any uncommitted changes in your projects, you must save a backup, otherwise you will lose your changes.

Steps -

• Go to Workspaces in Visual Studio

  File-> Source Control → Advanced → Workspaces

• Delete current workspaces.

• Re-add projects.

Answer 5

I experienced the same problem with TFS Express 2012. I do not know if my situation applies to you, but here are the facts:

• My TFS instance was running on a remote server.
• Neither the server nor my local machine were in the domain.
• I used the same user account name on both machines, but with different passwords.
• Setting passwords for the same problem.

Functions that didn't work were those that launched the project website, and I could navigate directly anyway.

Answer 6

I managed to solve the problem on my own by mapping the disk to the area where TFS seems to have a cache, but then I have 2 separate workspaces going through 2 separate domains