The Microsoft Visual Studio environment is intended for use by professional programmers and can sometimes be confusing to students learning to use the product. There are some configuration changes you can make to help the environment be more friendly. These are some suggestions:

1. Choose Tools | Options and click on Text Editor in the left pane. You might want to deselect Drag and drop text editing in the right pane.
2. Click on Text Editor | All Languages | Tabs in the left pane. Click on Smart in the right pane. If you want your printouts to preserve your indenting, click on Insert spaces in the right pane.
3. Click on Projects and Solutions | VB Defaults in the left pane. Both Option Explicit and Option Strict should be On in the right pane.
4. Click on Projects and Solutions | VC++ Project Settings in the left pane. Set Build Logging to No in the right pane.

If you installed Microsoft SQL Server as part of the Visual Studio installation, a large process will execute continuously on your system. You might want to turn this process off until you need it since it consumes significant system resources. Here are the instructions:

1. Start SQL Server Configuration Manager from the Start menu. In the left window, click on SQL Server 2005 Services. You will see the following window:
   
2. In the right pane, right-click SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS) and select Stop to stop the service.
3. Now double-click SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS) and click on the Service tab in the window that appears. Change Start Mode to Manual and click OK.