TFS History Lost

Question

I have come across an issue that looks like TFS has permanently deleted a branch and all of its history and is not giving me the ability to interact with any of the changesets that were in that branch. Here is what happened:

I created a new branch(A) off of an existing branch(B).
I used A for a few months.
I merged everything in A back to B.
I deleted A by right clicking on the branch in Source Control Explorer and clicking delete and checked in the change.
[At this point I didn't check to see if A could be undeleted, and didn't notice anything amiss]
2 weeks pass
Now I want to view the history of a file that was merged
I go to the visual studio settings and check the box that shows all deleted items
A is nowhere to be found
I check to see if some other branches that I had deleted in the past were visible, and they are still present.
I look in the change history of the parent directory and I can't even see the changeset from when I deleted A.
- I have admin access to the TFS database, but don't understand the schema well enough to search for all "delete" changesets.
- I've tried to use the API in Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client to get more information, but it isn't providing any more records that the TFS history window did

Update

I just ran a a tf destroy command on a test branch to see what the symptoms are, and the symptoms are consistent with what I'm experiencing. I suspect that this branch was destroyed, now my goal is to find out if destroy leaves behind any information about who or when

I cannot, though I wouldn't expect to see it it B. I can see the merge changeset in B, but not the delete. — Vic Peters, Feb 07 '12 at 21:38
What about doing a "View History" at project level ($/MyProject) ? — DaveShaw, Feb 07 '12 at 21:39
That shows all changesets for all other branches, all changesets for A are simply absent, including the initial branch, all changes and the delete. — Vic Peters, Feb 07 '12 at 21:47
Is it possible some "destroyed" it? http://stackoverflow.com/a/2341284/383710 — DaveShaw, Feb 07 '12 at 21:51
Yes, that is possible. I've added an update to my original post. — Vic Peters, Feb 07 '12 at 21:53
let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/7437/discussion-between-vic-peters-and-daveshaw) — Vic Peters, Feb 07 '12 at 22:04

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

1

Further investigation reveals that a team member on a different project had run a cleanup script during the two week period that had invoked the destroy command, accidentally destroying some of our deleted branches. The advice in How to find out who ran the TFS Destroy Command? revealed who it was, and how it had happened.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

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answered Feb 08 '12 at 15:50

Vic Peters

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TFS History Lost

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