Wallace, thank you for your detailed reply. Good to know about creating new profile. I had already uninstalled Gimp thoroughly, cleaned registry and deleted any trace of Gimp I could find. Then I reinstalled. Nothing helps yet. This is only on one laptop so I suspect it is a windows driver issue but can't find it. I have been using Gimp for years on many different machines and this is the first issue that has me totally stumped. Partha's portable builds have the same behavior on this laptop. I am so dependent on Gimp that I'm on the verge of doing a Windows reinstall. I WILL NOT USE A PC WITHOUT GIMP - PERIOD

PS: I use your sharpening plugin and love it

Thanks for all your hard work on behalf of the Gimp community.