I downloaded the file, unzipped it (both 1.5 and 2, single language and multilingual, i've tried all 4).
When I run the program, splash screen pops up, then I get an hourglass for a few seconds, and then nothing. gaim is a running process but it's not visible on my screen and doesn't do anything.
Notes:
I have GTK 2.0 installed on the computer (I use easytag). I've tried uninstalling it and running with it not installed, this does nothing. Reinstalling it does nothing either.
Gaim has never been installed on the computer. I double checked, and there are no gaim settings in %appdata%
So, I have no idea why this doesn't run correctly.
Does this happen with the non-portable version of Gaim aswell?
I tried this after I posted, and noticed normal gaim didn't work either. Ended up solving the problem by going through gaim's site and noticing that cygwin interacted with GTK in bad ways occasionally. Took cygwin out of my system PATH, and now it works fine.
I had the same problem and one thing I found out from GAIM's site is that if it doesn't run under XP, try removing the tcl.dll from your system.
I didn't want to remove it so I went into the PortableApps/Apps/PortableGaim/gaim/plugins directory and renamed the tcl.dll to tcl.dll.old and then tried starting GAIM... guess what: it started fine.
I had a problem where it worked fine on my home PC, but not on the university PCs. I tried this fix, and now it works great on both.