I've downloaded and installed the newer version of gimp 2.8.8 from gimp.org.

I wonder if there's a way to delete all the pluggins that load every time I start up Gimp?

Pegleg

It can be done, however, you probably do not want delete them all or GIMP will be quite crippled (for example, you will only be able to load and save XCF files). You will also find that even if you don't need a particular plug-in, there may be third-party scripts and plug-ins that rely upon them being present.

Do you mean GIMP-2.8.6? I don't think 2.8.8 has been released yet.

Oh, yes th4e 2.8.6

If I could just remove some of the [File] [Create] Buttons Logos Patterns that I don't use maybe the program would load faster. It seems to be starting slower and slower.

Pegleg

Also the new 2.8.6 has a blinking hour glass every time I go to open a new image from my hard drive. I wonder if it's just my machine or a bug in the program. Whould I mention this somewhere else?

Pegles

Also the new version isn't able to drag and drop a layer from one xcf file to another opened in another tab. And when I click the x to close the last image it closes the whole program.

PegLeg if GIMP is loading slowly try removing some brushes and patterns in your user/.gimp-2.x directory. Then add the ones you need after GIMP starts, and refresh patterns or brush dialogs to make them usable again.

Patterns and brushes are the top two resources that slow down GIMPs load time.

Thanks Rod
I just did a full reinstalation of my operating system Win vista. When I wiped the drive it saved a file called old.windows which has all my old stuff in there. Program files and documents and users. I don't know why but my user/.gimp-2.x directory doesn't contain anything except folders. Scripts, Brushes etc are not in there. Do you think maybe when I istalled the newer gimp 2.8.6 it may have just located and now uses these old files. But my added scripts (.scm files) from the old gimp aren't available in the new gimp.

Or maybe the default brushes are held somewhere else. My old folders only contain the things that I created. I don't create much stuff.

Gimp keeps things in two places: in the install tree (under C:\Program Files, usually) and in the user's profile (under C:\users\Your_id\.gimp-2.8). Many users are misdirected and told to add things in the install tree (because it's easier to find?). But things put there are usually not backed up (because they can re restored by re-installing)...

When you reinstall Gimp it automatically re-uses the existing users profile (and when you install 2.8 over 2.6, it convert the 2.6 profile in to a 2.8 one).

On startup Gimp lists the files in the script and plugins directories and runs them once to obtain their registration data (where they appear in menus, etc...). This can of course be very slow, so Gimp records the timestamp of the file with the registration data, and at next startup it doesn't run the script/plugin and reuses the same data if the file has the same time stamp as before. So the number of scripts and plugins has very little influence on startup time (except for some 32-bit Windows version (2.8.6?) that has a bug and re-runs every thing each time). Other add-ons (patterns and fonts, as far as Gimp lore goes) can slow down the startup, but there are add-on managers scripts/plugins to keep most of these outside Gimp's reach until they are really needed.

It's the reason that I temporarily renamed my gimp 2.6 user folder before installing 2.8 ofnuts. lol

GIMP usually will take whichever GIMP 2 directory you have in the user directory and COPY it and rename it to the newer version you install. For instance if you have a /.gimp-2.6 directory in the user folder it will copy the entire .gimp-2.6 SUBFOLDERS and contents NOT the rc files and rename it to the newer version say /.gimp-2.8. Once you LOAD the newer version of GIMP for the first time all the new rc files are written.
It will NOT delete or remove the older /.gimp-2.6 directory and it's sub folders.

Never install any new plug-ins or other resources in the program files directory. UNLESS that is what the installer calls for. Most come with an install README text file.