You may get a “workspace already exists” when you have VS 2008 or VS 2010 installed as well as VS 2012 and you try to connect them to TFS 2012.
Figure: The Workspace already exists on computer
This results in this error ever time you start VS 2010 or VS 2008.
Applies to
- Visual Studio 2008 connecting to Team Foundation Server 2012
- Visual Studio 2010 connecting to Team Foundation Server 2012
Finding
If Visual Studio 2012 is the first thing that you open to create a new workspace against a new collection a default workspace of “computername;username” will be created as a “Local” workspace.
When you subsequently open VS 2008 or VS 2010, which do not support Local Workspaces, you get this error when it tries to create a workspace. Visual Studio does not detect that this workspace already exists as when it queries the server the “agent” filtering does not return local workspaces.
Workaround
Manually create a “Server” workspace for use in VS 2010 and VS 2008.
Figure: Create a new Workspace with a new Name
- Select “File | Source Control | Workspaces… | Add…”
- Fill out a new name and then select “OK”
- Select your new Workspace from the drop down
You can now connect to Source Control..
Originally published at Where Technology Meets Teamwork by Martin Hinshelwood, Senior ALM Consultant. (source)