C++ :: Catching Exceptions From Initializer List

In order to test catching exceptions from an initializer list, I deliberately did bad practice by hard coding an argument to a ctor that would cause a std::bad_allocto be thrown. Obviously better practice is to send a variable, but that would cause a compile error, so I hard coded a value.

The program I wrote creates Prime Numbers up to a specified limit which is an argument to the ctor of type std::size_t. The program works fine IMO, using g++ in cygwin:

$ time ./PrimesExe
Limit is 2000000
148933 Primes Created

real 0m1.210s
user 0m1.123s
sys 0m0.046s

Now when I send something invalid like a negative number or something too big for std::size_t, the program seems to run indefinitely, when compiled with g++ under cygwin. I haven't tested it yet on Linux.

However, if I do the same on VS2013 express, it takes about 15 seconds to print the expected caught exception message. I was not expecting it to take so ridiculously long compared to the reasonable amount of work involved in doing primes up to 2 million.

I have read up about what is involved in catching exceptions: stack unwinding, keeping track of what needs to be destroyed etc. But this is 1 object with 1 ctor argument, no Base classes or any other complications. So why such a long or indefinite amount of time?

This whole example is probably contrived, and I am wondering whether exceptions is the right tool for this - it is similar to the divide by zero problem, or could be considered a programming error to call a ctor with a bad argument?

Also, catching an exception thrown by an initalizer list seems a bit awkward in that one seems to have enclose the creation of the object and all subsequent uses of it (and any code in between ) in the same try block, otherwise it goes out scope. I suppose I could try to write a wrapper function that returns a smart pointer reference to a valid object, but I would have to test the validity of it's return too. That's the awkward part - there is probably a better way?

Are there any recommended ways of recovering from initializer list exception, that is, to allow the user to enter a new hopefully valid value and try to create the object again?