Hi Pecan, thanks for the quick reply!
Unfortunately, abort is also disabled on the build menu, along with several other options. Killing C::B in task manager didn't seem to help. I assume the execution console running my program was just some sub-process of C::B, but at any rate, I didn't notice any new tasks or processes running to suggest otherwise.
I downloaded v20.03 32-bit, then updated the 32-bit MinGW compiler as recommended by Alex's learncpp tutorial. I honestly don't remember whether I got it from FossHub or SourceForge though. Wondering if I just need to try a new compiler, but given my ancient OS, I'm starting to think these problems will haunt me regardless.
Of note, I had to install api-ms-win-crt-string-|1-1-0.dll to get C::B to run in the first place, so not sure if that's an indication of a larger problem.