Point mode = show tool pointer
point rendering = show the actual outline of the brush you are currently using.
Like say you have a "star" brush in your brush collection.If you choose that brush it will show the outline of it when you select any of the paint tools.
Most people use the setting you stated above, but sometimes rendering can be very long depending on the size of the chosen brush.

Are you using a tablet?
oh and i need to see an screen shot of the Gimp opened with an available layer created.
I want to see what gets highlighted for availability/use.

Thanks

Hi, Sorry I haven't been around, we have been having difficulties with my youngest who is 18. He is now seeing a psychiatrist for whatever his issues are, and it has been a difficult time.

I changed the brushes, but it still didn't work, so am putting them back to how they were.

I have the image for the layer, showing that it is active.

If un installing Gimp, and all the user files didn't fix the problem, and portable doesn't work.It is somewhere in GTK.
GTK is a separate install that normally comes with any Gimp install.(they are Gimps runtime libraries)
If you have another computer try installing Gimp on it.If that doesn't work.


I do not know what the problem could be and you may want to talk to the developers about it.

My son had gimp installed on his laptop and it worked fine on his.

I wish that we could figure this out. I need to get this working

I just do not understand why Portable will not work.
Did you try downloading Parthas Gimp-2.7.4 version of portable?

http://partha.com/

I'm having the exact same problem. I don't know what to do. If it helps to figure anything out, my problem didn't start right at installation. I had used it for awhile, then one day I was using gimp and all of a sudden nothing worked.