GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 303688
Gimp crashes on startup
Last modified: 2008-01-15 12:53:49 UTC
Try starting the program. I have Win. XP service pack 2, GTK 2.6.7. I just installed Gimp 2.2.7. and it crashes on startup. All I get is an error message. the error message is as follows Pango-ERROR**:file shape.C line 75 (Pango_shape): assertation failed:(glyphs->num_glyphs>0) aborting
This has been reported many times already. See comment #9 of bug #301139 for a workaround. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 301139 ***
I see what comment 9 says, but how can I change the theme from "default" to "small" if the program won't even start? This workaround seems to ingore the fact the the program won't even start, it crashes instantly.
Good question. (This bug has been reported so many times, with slight variations, that the response has become more or less automated.) There are a couple of things you could try. First, if you have an existing .gimp-2.2 folder somewhere, something inside it may be causing the problem, so you could try deleting or renaming it. Second, because a file name somewhere may be causing the problem, you could try starting GIMP from a console window, and altering the directory you are in when you start it. Since we don't really understand the root cause of this problem, there are no guarantees that either of these will work, of course.
I've solved my problem with this, so I'm going to tell you what I did. I'm not sure if the problem was installing the GTK without uninstalling the previous version, or installing the Gimp without uninstalling the previous version, but one of the two must have been the main problem. Uninstall both the GTK and Gimp programs and reinstall them fresh. That fixed the problem for me. If you get an error message that says Windows can't uninstall either one because an uninstaller file is missing, manually delete the main program files. I had to do this with GTK, as an uninstaller file was missing from GTK 2.6.4, and 2.6.7 wouldn't even install. Uninstall them both and try a fresh install. In fact, maybe this should be must, and mentioned as necessary directions somewhere.
This would indicate that your GTK+ installation was messed up somehow, but I doubt that it will be possible to determine how exactly. Normally, newer GTK+ installers automatically remove older ones.