I've seen lots of people having the same problems with the game and asking for solutions in a lot of different threads, so I figured I'd make one thread that lists all these solutions.

TECHNICAL ISSUES:

Game Crashes on Startup: No error message, it just drops back to the desktop.

As far as I know, there is no surefire solution to this problem, but here's some things that MIGHT work:

1) Force Windowed mode through a registry edit. See this post for details. More on windowed mode below.

2) Try running the game in XP compatibility mode (for VIsta / Windows 7).

3) If you are using multiple GPUs, try disabling SLI or Crossfire.

4) Try reinstalling the game, and make sure you run the installer as administrator in Vista / Windows 7. It may also help to install to a location other than Program Files (like c:\games).

Frequent Crashes: The game crashes periodically, while otherwise playing fine.

1) Run the game in windowed mode. This seems to help a lot of poeple. You can make the windowed game fill your entire screen, so it's just like fullscreen, using this program.

2) Delete old savegames. If your game WAS running fine and is now crashing a lot, you probably have accumulated too many savegames. The saves are probably located in "My Documents/My Games" and then in a folder for The Witcher. Back them up and delete a bunch. Alternatively, use [url=this utility][/url] to manage and delete old savegames.

3) Some users report that forcing Vsync, either through drivers or with the D3DOverrider program (see below for more on that) fixes the crashing.

4) Follow the instructions in this post by beliar.

5) Try down-clocking your video card. Instructions for this will vary by card but a good place to start is in the card's control panel.

6) Disable Realtek's Dolby "sound space expander", if applicable.

MIssing .dll File: The game won't start and gives an error about a missing .dll file.

1) Download and install DirectX 9. Don't worry, this can be installed at the same time as DX10 and DX11. You can download an "offline" installer here (you have to be online to install this way).

Bypassing Minimum System Requirements: The game won't start because it thinks you're below the minimum system requirements.

EDIT: Check this link for several solutions to the problem:
http://lc-games.com/the-witcher-minimum-system-requirements-not-met-workaround

1) Create a shortcut to witcher.exe (the actual witcher.exe file, NOT the game's launcher!). Go to the shortcut's Properties window, then alter the "target" field as follows. Change "c:\blah\blah\witcher.exe" to "c:\blah\blah\witcher.exe" -dontforceminreqs. Make sure the last part is OUTSIDE the quotes, and there is a space between the quotes and the part you added. The run the game via this shortcut.

EDIT: Note that this fix will limit the graphics options, potentially making the game look pretty bad. If you know your machine can run the game better than that, try the alternate fix in this thread:

http://www.gog.com/forum/the_witcher/fix_minimum_requirements_not_met_on_win7_x64/post1

NOTE: If you do not have the SoftwareOnly registry key, it may be enough to simply change the EmulationOnly key.

The "Stuttering Cutscene" Problem: The game runs fine, but the cutscenes run at a very low FPS.

1) Toggle the "Depth of Field" setting in the graphics options. Some users report that turning it off fixes the issue, others find that turning it on fixes it.

"Twitching Scenery" Problem: People's hair, trees, and other objects twitch like crazy.

1) This seems to be related to using more than one GPU. Disable SLI/Crossfire and try running the game again (performance should not be affected).

Pixellated Characters During Conversations: Characters are pixellated / have blocky rendering during conversations and cutscenes.

1) This seems to be caused by using a 16:10 widescreen resolution, and can be fixed by using a 16:9 resolution instead. If you have a 16:10 monitor, check your graphics card scaling options when switching to 16:9 so that it will run with black bars instead of stretching the screen.

2) Some players report that turning the lighting and / or shadows setting to "low" will fix this problem while still allowing 16:10 resolutions. Please note that these settings will lower the visual quality of the game.

Audio and/or Video Skips / Stutters in Opening Cinematic: Often just a minor skip, but actually means that some frames are being dropped in the cinematic and the sound gets out of sync.
[EDIT: This may have been fixed with the newer v2.0 download from GOG]

1) Back up the file binkw32.dll contained in your Witcher folder, and then replace it with the one found here.
[EDITED April 18, 2019 with a new download link]

Cutscenes don't play at all: Just a loading screen or a screenshot instead of a cutscene.

1) Change the lighting setting in the graphics options to "low".

2) If using a multiple monitor setup, run fullscreen instead of windowed. You may be able to turn up the lighting settings in this case.

Long Delay When Loading Saves: Up to several minutes wait.

1) Delete some old saves (see above under "Constant Crashes" for details). Having too many saves causes this problem.

2) Remove the "read-only" attribute from the savegame folder. This will lower the delay but it can still result in a long wait; option 1 is a better solution.

Version Number Weirdness: If you alt-tab out of the game, on the taskbar is says v1.4.5, even though it should be v1.5

1) This is normal! The version number on the taskbar after alt-tabbing out of the game is wrong. Get the real version number by finding the witcher.exe file in your game folder, right-clicking it and looking under properties. It should be v1.5. You can also check the version using Game Explorer in Vista/Windows 7.

TWEAKS:

Enabling Vsync:

Sometimes forcing Vsync in the graphics card drivers works, but sometimes it doesn't. If it doesn't, grab the D3DOverrider program that's included as part of RivaTuner. You don't need to run RivaTuner, just run D3DOverrider. It's a small program that runs in the system tray and is used to force Vsync.

GAMEPLAY QUESTIONS:

I can't get Geralt to attack!

The combat system throws off a lot of new players. It's all about timing... you click to start an attack, but if you click again too soon you will CANCEL the attack. You have to wait until Geralt has finished his first attack before you can initiate another, and if you time it right he will chain attacks together. Pay attention to the tutorials at the beginning which cover this, and also check the game manual for a good explanation of how it works. Then it will take a little practice to get the timing right.

This journal entry doesn't match what happened!

There are a few points in the game, notably at the end of Chapter 1, where the journal entries for quests do not match what actually happened. This just seems to be a bug, so you can ignore it.

Feel free to post other fixes/tweaks to this thread. I can edit them into this post.

I think you should add something about when you cannot play the game because you're missing a file with a .dll extension People may think it is something wrong with the game but in fact it is probably the fact they don't have the right direct x nine files.

Also, some people may need a way to skip the minimum requirement detection to play the game. There are other posts with a solution for this on the board.

Thanks, added these to the first post.

Just to add a small point, an easy way of checking the version number is to use Game Explorer in Vista/Windows 7.

And an issue I've encountered is when you press "Load Game", it can take up to several minutes until the available save games are displayed.

Only workaround I've found is to delete most of the older saves, and just leave 6-8.

It seems to have a problem when the number of saves accumulate.

EDIT: I've tried removing the "read only" attribute from the save game folder ""\Documents\The Witcher\saves".

It seems to have fixed it, but I can't be certain until the saves build up again.

I'll let you know if it works later on when I've put a few more hours in.

Thanks, added. Yeah I've encountered that too, but forgot to put it in the post. Added. Interesting! Does that mean that quicksaves actually overwrite each other? The default behavior is that quicksaves are identical to manual saves, and keep accumulating without overwriting (unlike most games where each quicksave overwrites the last). Definitely let me know if that works, and I'll add it as a solution.

You can probably test this with only a few saves... if I delete all but about 5 saves, I get to the load game list instantly, but with as few as 30-50 there is a couple-second delay, enough to be noticeable. You don't get the really long delays until they number in the hundreds though.

Also I've noticed that I only ever have four autosaves, so those apparently do overwrite, at least for me. My save folder is indeed set to read-only, however.

I only use quick saves, and I have autosave turned off.

If I have only a few saves, it takes a couple of seconds.

If I have more than 30-50 or so, it can take a while, sometimes anything up to a few long minutes depending on the amount.

The save folder can get pretty large, as each one of my quick saves is 18-22 MB and they don't overwrite.

I won't know if the read only attribute fixes it for another day or so until my saves build up, but I'll let you know as soon as I can say for certain one way or another.

Thanks.

Perfect...thanks.

Bump, added some new fixes.

Bump, another new fix added.

I've had a chance to test it, and removing the "read only" attribute does help, but it's still far from perfect.

It goes from several minutes lag, to 30-40 seconds, so it's not ideal.

I have however, found something to make the ordeal of deleting saves easier.

A guy on the Steam forums made a "Save Game Cleanup Utility" for The Witcher 2.

I asked him if he could modify it for this game, and he obliged.

I did not create this program, nor am I claiming or want any credit.

I'm just sharing the file so it can help others.

http://uploading.com/files/95959d74/Save%2BGame%2BCleanUp%2BUtility%2Bv0.7.zip/

He's on these forums, too..it's already in the sticky.

Thanks for checking this, I updated the first post with this info. I also added a link to the GOG post with all the info about the savegame utility (thanks chautemoc).

thanks Waltorious for the 'doesn't meet min requirements' fix

good call on posting the minreqs fix in this sticky. There have been half a dozen threads on that topic, lol.

Is there any way to get rid of the pixelation issue in cutscenes/dialogues?

I sort of remember it was possible to get rid of by setting the AF to the same value both in game and in the GFX control panel, but this isn't working for me.