Fixed it
Short answer, install SP1 for SQL 2008 R2.
Long answer:
It may have been because I wasn't on the latest build of SQL 2008 R2.
I read about an April 2012 cumulative update the solved someone's issue after intellisense stopped working after a VS2010 SP1 update, and I am running that, too. But I have VS2010 SP1 running on my windows laptops, too, and my sql intellisense never broke there.
I've never had to deal w/ a CU before and I didn't want to start now. So I simply ran windows updates and it reminded me that I never installed SQL 2008 R2 SP1. After I updated to SP1, it's now working again. Running "select @@version" w/o the quotes of course in query analyzer will tell you your sql version. Here's mine now and intellisense is working again:
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (SP1) - 10.50.2500.0 (X64) Jun 17 2011 00:54:03 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation Standard Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.1 <X64> (Build 7601: Service Pack 1)
Also, not sure if this had anything to do with it, but while looking into this, I was also trying to figure out why I was always getting prompted for network creds using IE to browse my company's intranet sites. I joined the virtual to the domain, yet here I was. In short, I didn't have my company's base intranet url (w/ wildcard) in my 'Local Intranet' settings. Tools > Internet Options > Security > Local Intranet. Just add *.yourcompany.com (or the like) and that fixed it.
Why I'm sharing this last part is that I was wondering if my SQL intellisense was broken because I use integrated authentication to connect to databases and thought perhaps I wasn't able to 'read ahead for intellisense', if you will, for the same reason(s) I wasn't able to navigate intranet sites (domain cred pop ups). Thought if I fixed the intranet cred pop ups that it might also fix something under the hood that would fix sql intellisense.
So when the network cred thing didn't fix sql intellisense, I went further and found out about the SQL SP1, and that's when everything started working again.
By the way, I'm totally back in the saddle - SQL intellisense and no network creds pop up on company intranet sites.
Schwing! Go Parallels!
