A build may fail without any real indication if either of the following are true: 

1. More than one solution configuration is used 
2. 2 Projects with the same configuration are set to build as a batch build. 

Case example : 

The configurations for each of the cases above 

      

The results:
1.


2.

In the above example, the build failure is due to the fact that one configuration is an x64 project, it contains one x32 project as well (ConsoleApplication1). This triggers an access violation error which is a legitimate error. However, clicking on the red bar won't show you  this error. Only by looking at the console output or clicking one a project whose progress bar is empty (all white rather than green). 

As a workaround, uncheck one of the projects with the same configuration, so there will only be one project for each configuration. Another workaround is to use "BatchBuildParallelExecution2010" property  and set the value to 0, which will execute it as a serial batch build.