[ImperfectStorm]

It seems that many people (myself included) have had problems wherein the new Gimp 2.4 crashes during font loading, with Microsoft's standard error message and a cryptic warning about Freetype6.dll. Deleting fonts.conf in GIMP's etc\fonts folder stops the problem, but prevents the user from using text functions in the GIMP. However, there is one way to reactivate them. Go to the font folder in the Windows directory and click the fonts you want to be able to use. Hold ctrl and press c. Then, go to the documents and settings folder. Go into the subfolder for the user that installed GIMP. Further, go into the GIMP's own subfolder, and then the fonts subfolder. Right click in this folder and choose "Paste". When you restart GIMP, that font will be usable.