How to permanently fix IntelliSense poor functioning on SSMS?

I have literally installed on my development machine three different versions of SSMS standalone: 2008, 2012, 2014, and I work with SQL Server 2008 databases. On every single one of those versions, I tried to have IntelliSense display my available columns when I type a table alias and a dot "Table." for example. But that doesn't show up over 90% of the time. This happens similarly on any SSMS version I try.

I've searched for other people having this issue and found various cases, but none of those provided solutions, such as refreshing the IntelliSense cache and disabling/re-enabling IntelliSense itself, de-selecting e re-selecting certain options, work for me.

Could this be a problem related to the instances of SQL Server that I am connecting to, rather than with SSMS itself?

Edit: I have also tried to install a third party addon to SSMS, it then starts displaying as expected, but cripples my performance (making typing somewhat slower as it loads things in the background, which I really don't like), so I would rather fix the original functionality instead of resorting to that.

Thanks

SSMS 2016 is available for free. It has much better IntelliSense than in previous versions. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt238290.aspx I highly recommend upgrading.

Other reasons why you may be having problems, from personal experience:

• Highly utilized server makes it take longer to work. I have personally seen it take 5 minutes on a really bogged down machine.

• Local machines with low resources.

• Incorrect query syntax. This can cause IntelliSense to not load anything because it can not tell what it is supposed to be doing.

• Poor connection between local machine and server. We just moved locations at my job, with a slower connection, and my IntelliSense load times have drastically changed.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#151490, answer score: 4