Visual Studio 2010, TFS – The associated source control plug-in is not installed or could not be initialized.

I recently started getting the following error when opening a solution in Visual Studio 2010:

“The associated source control plug-in is not installed or could not be initialized. Common causes for this error include server unavailability and/or incorrect workspace mappings”

I had just installed Visual Studio 2012 and was worried this had caused the problem in VS2010, but now thankfully I think that it was just a coincidence, from my research this error seems to pop up frequently enough all on its own.

So, more information on how to fix the problem can be found here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5081405/tfs-error-source-control-unable-to-access-database

But in summary the way I was able to fix it was to edit the solution file by hand and remove the following section:

 #
	GlobalSection(TeamFoundationVersionControl) = preSolution
		SccNumberOfProjects = 99
		SccEnterpriseProvider = {4CA58AB2-18FA-4F8D-95D4-32DDF27D184C}
		... Blah Blah Blah.....
	EndGlobalSection
#

Once I had changed the solution file, I loaded it up in Visual Studio and put it on-line with TFS by choosing the File -> Source Control -> Go Online menu item.

Now my solution was back to normal and happily reconnected to TFS.

I was mightily relieved to get rid of that annoying problem, so many thanks to all at stackoverflow!