Answering the purely subject question "recommend me a better C IDE and compiler" I find Ming32w and Code::blocks (now with combined installer) very useful on windows but YMMV as you are obviously used to the MS IDE and are just struggling with C.
May I suggest you concentrate on console applications to get a feel for the language first before you attempt to tie it together with a windows UI which in my experience is the hardest bit of windows development.
