I've tried starting from the witcher.exe file and also tried the dontforceminreqs fix, but neither work. I also uninstalled and reinstalled directX with your link and used CCleaner (Which was awesome, thanks!!) but it's made no difference.

One of my friends is going to lend me his disc copy of the witcher tomorrow, so I'll let you guys know if that makes any difference.

Bummer :(

"Googling" around, I found these pages with some recommendations and ideas to fix this problem:

http://en.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?/topic/24052-the-witcher-crashes-on-startup/
http://en.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?/topic/27750-the-witcher-enhacned-edition-crashes-on-startup/

Yeah, these have fixes I would never have thought of. Check the sticky thread for instructions on how to get ahold of that bink32 file... my game worked fine without it but the cinematic was skipping frames and the audio got off sync. Apparently for some others the cinematic can fail entirely without that file, so definitely try that. The instructions are listed in the sticky under "Audio and.or Video SKips", scroll down a bit on the first post.

The other uses reports needing to install DivX to get the intro cinematic to play, so you can try that too.