If you really have no exposure to programming at all, an easier language like BASIC will at least get some of the concepts into your mindset. Things like variables, files and so on.
I would not say Visual Basic is the right place though. The drag and drop makes it very easy to make quite sophisticated user interface programs without really teaching you much, because so much of what needs to be done, is done for you.
I would suggest you consider where you want to go and start there. If your target is C programming begin there etc.
Transferring from one language to another will always mean work.
To go from C to C++ you will need to learn a whole new way of looking at programming, (object orientation), to get the most out of it - it is, of course, quite possible to write non OO in C++ but you lose a lot of power.
Similarly, if you start with C++ and then move to a C environment, you will have to start doing a lot of things you have not done before because you used C++ to do these for you, the template library is a classic example.
If I was forced to say one or the other, I'd say C++ as the real world uses of C are smaller than they were and smaller than C++, so it is a skill which is more likely to help you later.
C# is growing in popularity, in the MS world, if that is where you want to be heading, it may be worth considering. The move from C++ to C# is not as great as that between C and C++ in my opinion.
