Stay away from MFC is you can... I dont know MFC and when I tried to learn it, I went away with my tail between my legs. I learned that I can and I DID just find with standard API calls. Heck, I've even writtten spectacular GUI apps with just 'C'.
someone that's not 'self taught C' such as myself, might be able to give more advice. My advice, if you dont know MFC, stay away.
HI,
MFC is regular part of vc for windows programming in mfc contains classes that microsoft created for easing windows programming. and its a good point to start vc.
windows form is for programming using .NET framework---> vc++ .NET