I have recently rebuilt my laptop and as I reinstalled all my applications I took the opportunity to upgrade my anti virus from AVG 7.5 to their latest release v8.0. I installed Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite and then the Team Explorer without any problems. I then went into Team Explorer, clicked Add Server, enter the server name and received the dreaded error TF31002 unable to connect. I checked my account settings, check all the connectivity settings, checked accessing the TFS web services directly in the browser and I couldn’t find the problem. I disabled the Windows Firewall without any joy and then noticed a few people on the web talking about removing McAfee. While I don’t use McAfee it made me look more closely at AVG. I had been using AVG 7.5 for months without any VSTS/TFS related problems so I figured I was on a wild goose chase. How wrong I was.

AVG 8.0 has a component called “Web Shield” with a feature called “Web Protection”. Once I turned this off, I was able to add my TFS server into Team Explorer without any problems at all. I haven’t dug any deeper into this yet and I’m curious to see if I can turn it back on once the server has been added. I just wanted to share this solution now in the hopes I can save someone else the hours I have just lost 🙂