For reference, I can program pretty much everything I need for my game and many other projects I have (except 3D ones). I have no need for the internet and I have no need for databases either.
Builds for me are otherwise an instant so I have almost no time to cancel. 3 seconds is about the longest I have for builds (it may be 2 seconds now with my higher-powered CPU). I haven't experienced the mt.exe problem. To change projects, extremely rare that I ever do, I just open up another instance of MSVC. I also always save before changing or doing a test run. I don't see what the point of having multiple solutions is so I'm apparently immune to that part as I only have one solution per project. I don't use filters (didn't know they existed). I put all of my code in one file, with the exception of certain headers with a highly repetitive nature (a long list of defines for example). I don't use C++ and I otherwise haven't had much trouble with intellisense. The closest I get to troubles with intellisense is not seeing the variable type when I put the mouse over it, even if I have it correct (e.g. having SampleVar instead of SampleVars wouldn't cause anything to appear even changing to SampleVars sometimes still doesn't). What do you mean by "forward and back"? I haven't encountered problems with pre-build, pre-link, and post-build events that I'm aware of (could this be why, by simply adding another variable, all drawing stops and adding still more variables makes drawing resume again?). I only need to have the "CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE" type thing only once for sprintf and the related. Once added, I don't have to change it again. Defines work without problems for me that I've seen.
