Some people say that a smaller IDE is better for learning. Take a look at Code::Blocks. It's generally true that beginning C in an IDE is hard because not many books explain enough to control the IDE. Perhaps starting in a console and a basic text editor with syntax highlighting would be better – at least under Linux. Since Windows' console is far from great, I'd not recommend using it.
/EDIT: Dev-C++ used to be the best freely available IDE for Windows. However, it's development has been discontinued years ago and the most recent version unfortunately is full of bugs.
