Serioz Kweschun: Which mixer output to use to record to laptop mic input jack?

Seems dumb I don't know this but I've always used an interface and direct mixer outs for recording and I don't want to fry anything. I'm also curious of advantages, disadvantages and the general science behind it all BUT I really just need to know what I can get away with here. I figure a lot of you guys probably have some experience with this type of thing.
 
So here's the deal. I've got a little project that will require me to record some really low level signals into Pyro on my laptop (Pyro is pretty darned cool for $20 BTW). I've tried the internal mics and plugging my only non XLR mic into it (I have no idea what happened to my adapters which sucks) but the results are really bad (noise floor, fan noise, crappy mic buzz, etc). So I'm going to set up one of my old boards and use a proper condenser mic. I have various cables and adapters that will make the proper connections but some would be more elaborate and annoying than others. The easiest for me would to use the RCA tape outs but I can jury rig the other setups.
 
The board has:
RCA Tape out l/r (easiest)
Stereo Headphone out (also pretty easy)
Monitor/Alt Monitor/Aux out all l/r (kind of a pain)
 
So a) are any of these options gonna damage the mic input/soundcard on my laptop (Realtek hi-def) and b) which will provide the lowest noise floor?
 
Also I'm going to try a couple things but maybe you guys could recommend what's best in regards to handling the Windows mixer input. Like should I keep the Windows mic input level (in the Control Panel) turned down and crank the board up to compensate or use a higher Windows input level and keep the board lower? Again I'm trying to reduce the noise floor as much as possible.
 
As a side note I am quite pleased with how Pyro is performing. Although I'm only recording one stereo channel at a time I've had zero dropouts and pretty low latency running at 44.1/16bit and even while tossing effects like the Izotope Audio Restore (which is included) and multiple EQs I haven't had any problems on my rather meager box store laptop. I was using Audacity at first but it is not nearly as nice IMO. Really glad I snagged it with the one of the $20 Cake freebies. All I really wanted it for was the mp3 encoder and the music library functions but it works great as a simple recording tool as well. I might use it to record board feeds at shows in the future.
 
Anyway... thanks for your thoughts on all this. Cheers.