So I bought the Witcher on steam. Once it was downloaded I hit play and it gave me the cd key and asked if I wanted to launch the game or the adventure creator. the adventure creator worked fine. The game would load for a few seconds and then nothing would happen. I redownloaded from steam and same problem. I then used the CD key to get it from GOG. It installed and everything was fine. The game opened and I was playing. Then I had to stop. When I came back, now all of the launcher applications have the same response as steam did. You hit them, it loads for several seconds, and NOTHING happens! None of the launchers or applications aside from the adventure creator will open. I'm just confused because it did open once and ran fine, so it is not a system requirement. What the hell do I do???

Also the registration app will load but it says it cant connect to the server.

I am sure there is a fix for this, but I don't know what it is. In the meantime, however, you could try running the game directly from the executable. So instead of starting up the launcher, just navigate to wherever you installed the game and run witcher.exe. If this works, you can create a desktop shortcut that points to this file and run the game that way.

Hopefully that gets you playing, while others chime in on how to fix the launcher. Anyone?

When you installed the GOG version, did you start it right from the installer by pressing the "Launch" button? If so, you started the game with administrator rights, as the installer demands them. Try running the game with administrator rights now as well (right-click the games shortcut => Run as Administrator).