Pictures won't show in Gimp

[rich2005]

Well, that "first line" should have your user_name in it (not exactly the same as my example)
This one C:\Program Files\GIMP 2\GIMP 2\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins seems to have an extra \GIMP 2\ from what I consider normal, is that a typo ?

Certainly try the next de-bugging step. Rename your user profile C:\Users\"yourname"\.gimp-2.8 to C:\Users\"yourname"\.gimp-2.8-backup Then restart Gimp to make a new default user profile and see if you can open an image.