It seems all perfect ,everything should work
What remain is the possibility of a hidden dialog that require to be clicked away, but that is possible only opening images (may be rquest if convert the image color profile )not AFTER you create a new one (to be clear on this, chosing " new image"
you should see a dialog asking you size and color filling, ...Did you passed trought that dialog ?

Anyway hidden dialog can be made visible always :
OR by moving all the other windows that may hide it
OR as tab in the Windows taskbar ,
in this case should be a active dialog so the tab in the taskbar should be of a different color (usually orange instead then bluish) and/or flashing

It was to check this that i asked to make a video grab of the screen but you may do quicker by yourself:
load gimp, create the new image and than do as i explained to make visible the hidden or minimized dialog

I really can't imagine any other cause

OK, let's get the situation clear, try this is order and tell us where you can't do it:

- You can start Gimp and you get a window with a File/Edit/Select... menu
- If you move the window pointer above these File/Edit/Select they get highlighted
- If you click on them you get a dropdown menu
- You can create the default image using File/Create
- You can save an image using a new name (i.e. you can type things in the file dialog)
- In the image window, the mouse cursor shows a brush tip next to the pointer
- If you click on the small dotted square at the bottom left of the image window the window becomes
reddish, and reverts to normal if you click again
- Ctrl-L makes a "Layers" window appear
- In the Layers dialog, you have one single layer, it is called "Background", and it is selected
- Ctrl-B makes the Toolbox appear
- In the Toolbox there is one tool icon highlighted
- In the image window, Windows/Dockable dialog/Tool options makes a dialog appear, with a "Tool options" title bar, and the name of the active tool at the top.
- The name of the active tool in that dialog changes if you select another tool

This is only a beginning...

Could you also please open task manager and tell us which apps are running with Gimp?

Hi, sorry for the delay in responding, I'll do these things and report back to you. We were away for the weekend for a wedding that was 5 hours away from us. I don't want you all to think I have given up, as I haven't.

Not a problem cssaddict we are still here.
Hopefully we can get this hashed out for you.

Thanks Rod, I hope so, it is very frustrating since all my other graphic programs work just fine.

One thing that I just thought about is my processor. It is an AMD 64, would this have any play in this?

My other computer has an Athlon 64X2 and gimp runs fine on it.

Thanks ofnuts, was just curious, and am trying to think of anything that could be blocking it. I wasn't sure if I should have had the version for 64 bit instead of this one.

No, the 32-bit version is fine. The 64-bit one is really useful only if you have 8GB of memory or more, and the operating system in 64-bit, too.

So cssaddict, you start up Gimp and it loads fine.
As soon as the interface pops up you go to File/new and just click ok and let the default image open.
Can you get that far?