Grab one of those 'how to' books and the associated compilers and just work through it.
Try to stay clear of Microsoft while you are learning the basics - because they tend to try and make everything specific to their own libraries and ideas.
I have the Deitel course on CD too. It's a bit like the Dummies Guide.
I have pile of books, examples, scripts, faqs etc for C, C++, VB, Java, Perl, DHTML, Teach yourself C++ in 21 days and a whole lot of other stuff that I scrounged and download off the net over the past 10 years or so.
If anyone is interested PM me.
They amount to about 30 megs zipped.