Strategies for Troubleshooting Team Foundation Server

The immediate goal of any troubleshooting session is to restore service as quickly as possible. However, the larger goal is to determine the cause of the problem. Root-cause analysis is the practice of searching for the source of problems to prevent them from recurring.

Problems represent deviations from known or expected behavior. The most effective way to solve a problem is to gather information, and then isolate and eliminate variables before you try to fix the problem.

In This Section

• Avoid Common Pitfalls When Troubleshooting Team Foundation Server
  Describes how you become aware of common pitfalls in troubleshooting Team Foundation Server so that you can avoid them.

• Identify Problem Symptoms When Troubleshooting Team Foundation Server
  Describes how you start troubleshooting by observing and identifying symptoms of the problem.

• Check Technical Information Resources for Team Foundation Server
  Describes how you check technical information sources for ideas, solutions, and similar or related symptoms reported by other users.

• Review Your Team Foundation Server's History
  Describes how you review the history of your computer to know about recent changes. This includes all changes that were made to hardware and software installed.

• Isolate Software Issues Affecting Team Foundation Server
  Describes how you analyze the components of Team Foundation Server to isolate the root cause of the symptoms.

• Isolate Hardware Problems Affecting Team Foundation Server
  Describes approaches for isolating problems with hardware.

• Document and Evaluate Results When Troubleshooting Team Foundation Server
  Describes how to document changes you make while troubleshooting, and how to evaluate the results of those changes.

• Take Proactive Measures to Help Troubleshooting Team Foundation Server
  Describes measures you can take to help future troubleshooting efforts.