Hi,

Whatever you do you will need something running on the Arduino. There isn't any serial to read or write from windows if a program on the arduino isn't running.

There is an Arduino library called Firmata that exposes all digital IO via Serial so you can then remote control the arduino using the intellisense of a windows or another c++ program.

You can learn about firmata here https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/Firmata

If all you do it open the firmata example and upload to the Arduino then you don't need Visual Micro unless you then want to develop your own bespoke copy of Firmata or debug the existing Firmata code.

The example you posted shows how to read/write serial from C++ although doing so from C# is much easier. If you can run with windows .net you can use the System.IO namespace which contains really easy to use Serial read/write without restriction.

You might also find that creating a small Arduino program to expose functionality that can be called remotely via Serial is an option to consider. Where as Firmata is good it can leave the Serial  to handle too much/ For example reading a gps and sending the coordinates via Serial instead of the entire GPS message can be much easier to handle because there are libraries that already read the GPS stream and extract the info from it.

Lastly could look at what Microsoft have done for Windows 10 Arduino integration. They use Firmata and Serial to enable control via phones, tablets etc. They have made a number of pc based examples to work with many different Sensors via firmata so have invested effort in Firmata where not many others have bothered.

Hope this helps