Crash after intro cutscene [SOLUTION]

[Yoseppy]

Launch the game, logos come up, intro cutscene plays and then the game crashes before reaching the main menu. Sound familiar?

I've seen a lot of people having this same issue so I thought I'd post the solution that worked for me.

It appears that the issue is the game trying to locate save files for the witcher 1 (you can import witcher 1 saves into the witcher 2).

Renaming your "Documents\The Witcher" folder will cause this to be skipped and the game launches properly.

Hope this helps someone!




Nerdy stuff:

I was seeing this in Event Viewer \ Application logs:

Faulting application path: <redacted>\Steam\steamapps\common\the witcher 2\bin\witcher2.EXE
Faulting module path: <redacted>\Steam\steamapps\common\the witcher 2\bin\w1import.dll

I think this might be a Windows 10 related issue.

[DeezNutz420]

My man you are a SAINT! I've had this problem for YEARS and never found a solution. This worked. Thank you so much!

[Dbfan4life]

works without problems for me and I'm on windows 10

[«ºG®èGº»]

Heya, I've the same issue.
Your solution Yoseppy :
Renaming "Documents\The Witcher"
I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean change the folder named Witcher 2 to The Witcher, instead? Or renaming it to something else?

[Explorer]

I'm years late, but just in case it helps someone in the future, here's my additional finding:
what's causing the crash is a large number of saves from the first game. The above solution (renaming the folder) works, because the game then doesn't find any old saves - but that also means you can't import those saves and get the benefits from it.
So, the alternative solution is to remove all but the last save. With just one save in the folder it won't crash and you can happily import it.

[Ardaen]

This solution doesn't work on a Mac.
I'm here years later, finding the same issue, and no solution anywhere.
I'm playing on Mac, which seems to be the one with the problem. I have tried everything, leaving only the latest file saved at the Order of the Flaming Rose with Dandelion, both in its original folder of The Witcher/saves, and copying it into Witcher 2/gamesaves, but it doesn't recognize the save on the former, and the game crashes after the intro in the latter. I've tried moving the whole saves files, and putting it at different locations. I've tried with different save files, from the Ice Plains, and creating new ones. I played in English, so the language should not be an issue. I've turned cloud storage on and off and it doesn't make a difference.

It just seems like The Witcher 2 will crash after intro whenever there is a savefile from Witcher 1 inside the Witcher 2 gamesave folder, but if you remove it then you can't import Witcher 1 files, as it doesn't read them in their original location... which I spent a lot of time playing precisely to be able to continue with 2 and 3. I'm very disheartened. There doesn't seem to be a solution online.
Please someone help!