Before going “pro” I have used the behringer xenyx x2442usb together with Cubase 5 for a very long time. This gives you a mixer with more than descent preamps, fx, compressor and a lot of inputs. Connection to the PC with a single USB cable and it’s recognized without problems on Windows. Price is below 300$ (if you take the smaller models, they are even cheaper).
Never had trouble with it, except maybe some small latency with my electronic drumkit (but that was probably more an issue of the crappy PC I had at the time).