I’ve been pulling my hair out for weeks with TortoiseSVN ever since I updated to Windows 7, and boy has it been a giant pain in the ass. Sometimes updates and check-outs worked, sometimes not. Sometimes I could commit, sometimes not. Sometimes the icons appeared, sometimes not. I’ve tried reinstalling TortoiseSVN, I’ve tried registry hacks, I’ve tried everything that Google told me to try and still no joy…

Here’s my setup, and here’s what fixed it…

Windows 7 Ultimate 64
TortoiseSVN 1.6.6
Netbeans 6.8
BitDefender2010

Wait… BitDefender? Why does that matter? Honestly, I have no idea… But switching off the firewall and real time protection, doing my updates, and turning them back on fixed my checkout/update/commit issues.

How did I figure this out?

In an act of desperation I booted my machine up in Safe Mode + Networking (most of you probably already know how to do this, if not let me help you.) Safe Mode + Networking loads Windows up in a bare bones environment plus allows internet access (but still used 800MB of RAM in my case, blech…)

Anyhow, I noticed right off the bat that BitDefender wasn’t running, and everything worked perfectly. A quick reboot back to reality, and disabling my anti-virus and TortoiseSVN was good-to-go. Well, almost… The icons are still screwy, and for me the only ones that appear in the file area are the changed ones. No green check boxes for me, but at least I can see changed files.

So for everyone out there that’s about to have a stroke this holiday season from not being able to commit code changes on time, try disabling your anti-virus and firewall before admitting total defeat and see if it helps.

I wonder how long it takes for self-inflicted bald spots to fill back in… Hmm…