Maybe this will be removed with 1.3 (I hope so!) BUT, after a patch removed the issue of seemingly no activity after launching the game from launcher I since have two different:

1) When I skip intro/intro finishes, I get a halt for several tens of seconds before game menu appears.
2) When I click "load game" in game menu, it often takes quite long (again, regularly at least 10 seconds). Related to that is the time it takes to delete/confirm deletion of save game in the menu - I would say it takes too long. Overall, I would love the game to be more responsive when dealing with save games.

I do use different mods (intro removal, complete equipment overhaul, better combat), though I am not sure if that has any effect.

Anyone has similar problems?

It's a big, complex game, so it will take a little time to load. The stronger and faster your CPU and GPU, the faster it will load. Also make sure you clean out your save game folder often - (move them somewhere else). It makes a LOT of saves.

What are your specs? What's your hard-drive RPM?

The Witcher has a similar issue where when save games build up, it takes forever to load a game.

It didn't affect the initial game loading, though.

Have you tried deleting some of your save games?

I have a similar issue with the game taking a while to start sometimes, but when I look at my CPU use, it's on 100% so it may be your CPU that's the bottleneck.

I have a lowly E8500 at 3.16GHz.

And keep in mind the game uses Havok Physics, so it requires a decent CPU.

Great, thanks a lot for these comments guys.

I will clear out my savegames, I am roughly in the half of my second playthrough, so I do have quite a lot already:).

CPU-power-wise, my specs should be ok: Core i7 920, MB MSI X58M, Asus GF9600 GT Silent, RAM Corsair 3x2GB DDR3 1600MHhz, HDD Seagate Barracude 500GB 7200RPM NCQ 16MB Cache

Your graphic card is a bit underspecced (the rest of your PC is solid) but I'm not sure how it would affect loading speed.

A few suggestions that come to mind might be to increase texture downscaling, decrease texture memory size, and playing with some other settings via the configuration tool. If you want finer tweaking, you can edit My Documents > The Witcher 2 > Config > User.ini

The rest of your specs are OK, except for your graphics card.

It's way out of place for your setup, you should really get a decent card.

Even if it is true, it is irrelevant to the OP's problem. The graphics card does not affect loading times. Disk speed, disk hygiene, and interfering applications have strong effects on loading times, and these should be checked first.

Long pauses sound like something is holding up disk transfers. Antivirus, especially any kind of real-time scanning, is a likely cause. Try turning real-time AV checks off.

Also make sure your disk is well defragmented. The built-in Windows defrag does an OK job, especially if your disk is not close to full, but an optimizing defragmenter like MyDefrag does much better.

Probably, although you can't say that with certainty, and I wasn't putting it up as the solution to the problem.

It was an observation, as the rest of his specs aren't too bad and the card looked so out of place.

Or you can use an SSD hehe

Or if you have a 24GB rig, you could put the game on a RAMdisk :)

But I suspect the OP has something interfering; even a dreadful disk subsystem should perform better than 10-second delays.

I didnt have time to do anything yet, I'll also defrag. However, I have to ask - no one had similar experiences? The thing is, it's only The Witcher that does this (10sec+ halts) and I think disk fragmentation or AV scanning would affect all other apps.

ad.graphic card: I know the card sucks, I bought something cheap and economical (and silent) at that time because the DX11 cards only started to appear then and I though I'd buy one later when they more established, more widespread and also cheaper (meanwhile, all games except Crysis and TW2 work run pretty smoothly:))

I'm having a similar issue--- the game freezes repeatedly during loading of saves, usually pushing the game window slightly off kilter at the same time. Sometimes by alt-tabing one can "nudge" it to start loading again, but is still a long and painful process. If I had to make a guess, I think it's tied to an issue with the HDMI connection---- somehow it's switching modes during loading causing it to freeze, but I haven't found a real work around. The problem really only started with the ATI 11.6 drivers, so I'm hoping once 11.7 is released it will be resolved, as otherwise the game runs very smoothly.

Guys, a short update - I deleted roughly 700MB worth of saves out of 1.13 gig and guess what, problem persists. I didnt see a noticeable change...

edit: disk defrag indicates 0% fragmentation.

Try removing all but a couple of saves, for testing purposes, and return them when you're done.

If that fails, try running the game as admin, or try a clean boot and run the game.