I hope someone can help me!

When I load the game, the intro-movie and the menu look fine. But when I choose a new game, something weird happens! For about 10 to 15 minutes the game 'loads' (Kaer Morhen is the name of the area). But when these minutes are over, the game starts, but I can only hear voices and other sounds and the screen is black!

The specs of my PC are what they should be to play this game and I've already applied the 1.3 patch. I also tried to load the game from witcher.exe instead of the autorun.

Please help me!

Usually this would mean you video card can't handle the game. Do you have the latest drivers for your card?

10 to 15 minutes to load is a looong time even for the unpatched version. Perhaps you have too many background programs running. Especially turn off any antivirus programs. Good luck it's a great game.

If you don't have any luck, consider posting your specs.

I have nothing else running, not even an Anti virus program.
But I'm going to download the latest drivers. If the game still wont work, I wil post my specs.

well I hope it works for you

all you really need to post would be video card, RAM, OS
and that it's not a laptop

I don't have Vista, if it's that I understand there is
'XP compatibility mode' which you could also try.

wh00t!

visited the official forum and did some googling and found your other querys

So you have an ATI Radeon HD 2600 AGP 512MB
which means you don't have a laptop. This is good.

If you have at least 1 Gb RAM and XP, I would think the
game would run as I run it on a P4 3.2 with only 1 GB RAM and a Nvidia 6800 AGP 512mb. Vista would need 2 GB RAM.

You might need to do some fiddling around with your graphics settings but you should be able to get it running.

I don't like the excessive load time, as the game progresses that is going to become a HUGE annoyance.
The patch is supposed to have fixed that.

You may well need more RAM. Have you created a permanent swap file as suggested in the official forum?
That's an old trick which really helps games/Windoz perform better.

I did search the offical forum, and found some of the information you mentioned.
The long waiting time is indeed a huge problem so I want to try the swap file thing. Can you post the link to that particular thread?

http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=5557.0
and
http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=8809.0

I of course have no idea how much of this you've already checked. Use the search function and look for pagefile

Their forum is arranged somewhat different, you practically have to go through the whole thing to find anything and unfortunately they don't tell you HOW to set the page file.

For XP:

right click desktop icon and select properties

select advanced; select performance settings

select advanced (your memory usage should be set for programs)

select Virtual memory change

now select no paging file and set

Then reboot and defragment your hard drive.

Then go through the menus again and for virtual memory select custom size.

You will see that the Windoz recommended size is 1.5x your total RAM. (Witcher 4m recommends 1.7x for some reason) Set both the Initial size and Maximum size to the same
number at LEAST equal to your total RAM and preferably to 1.5x or 1.7x total RAM. If your drive is partitioned it's recommended to use the first partition; if you have 2 drives
it's recommended to use the second drive.

Set OK and reboot.

I can't advise you on Vista as I've wrong about Vista a couple of times but for all I know it's a similar process.
Could probably google set Vista pagefile or something like that. It would help if you would say either XP or Vista at some point in your querys.

So did new ATI drivers do anything?

The new ATI drivers (both Omega and Hotfix divers) don't fix the problem. Actually, the graphics only get worse (really weird)!

About the swap file:
Do you mean The Witcher desktop file? Because that's a shortcut and it doesn't have much advanced properties. I've tried The Witcher.exe file but I can't find the performance settings. Sorry if I misunderstand you..

I do not use Vista (I could since I also have a laptop) but I'm not a great fan of Vista and I only have 1GB memory in my laptop.

The 'my computer' shortcut; sorry that wasn't clearer.

Right clicking the Witcher shortcut will allow you to set priority for the program however. It should be normal, you could try to set it higher.

"The graphics are worse" implies that you have some sort of graphics other than a black screen? Fiddle with the graphics settings. Put them at minimum, increase the gamma;
you can't really go too far wrong at this point.

The screen is black for a little while when the game starts
perhaps you're just not waiting long enough.
If you're serious about the fact it takes 15 minutes to load
maybe you just need to wait longer. That will unfortunately make the game just about unplayable as you proceed.

I would guess you need more RAM. A permanent swap file may help. Maybe you need to free up some space on your hard drive. Maybe your processor isn't fast enough. Maybe it's some deeper issue.

I don't really have any other ideas at the moment and this forum isn't exactly active; however someone may come along with an idea anytime.

It would probably make the most sense to work with the official Witcher In-game tech help thread as they of course know the most about the game.

Thanks for you answers anyway!