Visual Studio can be extremely slow in renaming files if you are using TFS with a “local” workspace as oppose to a “server” workspace, and the total number of files including different versions in the TFS repository exceeds 10,000 items.
Contrary to Microsoft’s recommendation, I suggest using a server workspace instead of a local one for much better performance. There are also some other downsides to local workspaces and the only upside is being able to work while your TFS repository is down. That’s not much of an upside considering if you can’t connect to TFS, you probably can’t connect to your LAN and there’s darn little work you can do anyway in that situation.
To change to a server workspace for TFS in Visual Studio 2015,
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In VS click on File –> Source Control –> Advanced –> Workspaces
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In the dialog that opens, select your workspace and click Edit…
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Click Advanced… (it does not matter which mapping is selected).
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Under Location, select Server and then press OK.
Switching over to server may take ten minutes or more depending on the size of your repository.
Once this is done, renaming files should be nearly instantaneous.