If you want to do the REAL low-level stuff, then you want to learn the Win32 API, where you handle messages in what is called a WndProc and use SendMessage to change your UI state. I can assure you that there are places in industry that do this, though there is a strong and growing tendency to make GUI-heavy apps out of something a bit easier to use than C++/Win32 (in particular C# or using something other than Win32, like MFC or WPF).
What's cool about Win32 is that you can make some pretty expansive apps with very small executables. Though I'm not sure, I bet that uTorrent is made with low-level Win32, which explains its microscopic binary size.
Anyway, although I don't have a tutorial to start from, I can tell you a few keywords to go from:
-You want to make a dialog. You'll need to make a parent-window first, but just about any IDE (Code::Blocks, Visual C++) has a project template that will create your window for you.
-You make the dialog in the resource editor, give the elements of it identifiers, and then can refer to those identifiers in code
-You'll want to make very heavy use of MSDN. Here's a good starting point:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...79(VS.85).aspx