There are a number of sites where you can download and look at some pretty reasonable VC6 books online.

http://www.maxcode.com has a few links to download free ebooks on C++, VC++, win32API and all the likes.

Alternatively there is:

http://www.crackinguniversity2000.it/mfcatl/index.htm

And last but not least, there is a good book I reference all the time when I was learning the basics, timers, databases executing processes at a basic level, Visual Studio and its "SAms teach yourself Visual C++ 6 in 21 days". Okay, its one of those 21 days books, but it is one of the good ones.

Its available all over the web in html format and its downloadable as a zip file from a lot of web sites.

Everyone learns differently and I found the forums to be most helpful when problem solving, (collaboration and all that jazz..)

A good forum when you have simpler problems, like learning about the ridiculous and frustrating amount of data types is www.codeproject.com which has some very highly informative articles ranging from light and easy to deep and well explained data structures and how particular data types organise their data down to the byte level

Good luck.

++R