I can't shed any light on it.. but I can question the sanity of asking "Why is a Microsoft product being cruel and unusual to me?" :lol:

To be fair to the MS devs, I'm sure there's a good reason behind it.. but I'll be damned if I know what it is. In my experience, MS C++ has always been slow to build.

The build machine isn't running McAffee Crippleware is it?