problem solved for me also (at least for now).
thank you

Same here!

Intel i5 4690k 4.2Ghz
GTX 970
8GB RAM

UPDATE 2: played for a while, doing all right now. Had a complete system crash just a few minutes ago though, which I usually see in games where I've had to reload from saves a few times; that Griffon is tough at low level, but interesting!.

UPDATE: I switched to fullscreen instead of borderless, and made it through several cutscenes without crashing. I also didn't drop to desktop in the last 45 minutes or so. Not saying that is the only thing to have made it stable, or that it won't kill my pc again later. Earlier, I did a lot of other 'fixes' suggested by other gaming sites, like setting it to unlimited frames, verifying files, repairing or installing the distros in the Witcher 3 game folder, etc. Also found an update to my sound.


My original post: Happens randomly throughout the game for me, mostly just drops to desktop, sometimes completely seizing up my machine, forcing a restart. The 'seized my system" error happened during the quest where you help a man locate his brother, out in the battlefield cutscene. The next time that same error happened, it was when I was speaking with the garrison Commander. Most other times, dropping to desktop, I am just walking around.

I'll try full screen instead of borderless, and post back later if I encountered it again during the garrison cutscene.

Same here.
Crashes randomly all the time, drops to desktop with sound. Need to kill the game with Ctrl+Alt+Del.

I also encountered these CTDs/freezes/black screen issues. What is working for me, so far, as a fix is closing EVGA Precision X16. It seems the game is sensitive to my GPU overclocking, albeit conservative in enthusiast levels. So now the single GTX 970 FTW+ I have is running on default clocks on auto fan settings. I'm using the latest nVidia driver 352.86. V-Sync is on with Unlimited frames setting.

It's froze on me 4 times now, randomly. I hope this gets fixed.

FX 8350
Sapphire Radeon Vapor X R9 290

Intel i7 4790K
MSI GTX 970

Latest drivers for Witcher 3

Freezing at cutscene when leavin 1st area (can skip the cutscene), crashing at loading screen afterwards (black screne, no respons)

As strange as it may sound, underclock your video card. My base was 1200mhz, put it down to 1100mhz and no issues since then. And i was having crashes every 1 -10 minutes with nothing else working. Since then played for near 2 hours fine. If it does not fix anything then just put it back to what it was. Cannot hurt to try.

I went back to nVidia 347.88 drivers, seems to have rectified the freezes (played 2+ hrs without one, had to stop). The 352.86 drivers seem to cause freezes for many people, I also had some with 350.12.

I've got more that 12 hours of Witcher 3 on the clock now and only the 1 crash near the beginning (during the cut-scene when Geralt wakes from his nightmare of training with Ciri).
The game seems quite stable to me since then.
I'm using latest drivers, GTX 970, Windows 7 (64bit) and playing the whole thing with controller only.

I have the same problem, only mines seems to have about a 50/50 chance of crashing at each cut scene.

After a few hours of trying I'm about 20-30 minutes into the game, and that was A LOT of crashes to get that far.

Tried a few things I found online but nothing works so until it gets patched not much I can do.

Same experience as you have - though my record is something like 8 minutes - the game crashes both in game, in cutscenes and when entering gameplay after video...

Mine hasn't crashed in over 4 hours in my latest attempt, could be any combination of these things... or just dumb luck:

1. Kill TeamViewer
2. Change from ultra to high detail
3. Change from 60fps to unlimited
4. Change from borderless window to unlimited

I am running hardware:

Windows 7 64-bit with latest updates
4GB GTX 970 with Witcher 3 driver
16GB RAM
i5-2500K
Only CPU is overclocked to 4.2Ghz.

Settings:

Post-processing all on max.
Graphics settings on high except:
Water quality - ultra
Texture quality - ultra
Hairworks - everything
Resolution - 1080p

I noticed that in my case only freezes when I open the inventory, and is only at random. My GPU is no even OCed, but my i5 2500k does (Though returning to stock clock doesn't change a bit, either).

Intel i5 2500k
Zotac Nvidia GTX 960 2GB
8 GB RAm DDR3 (no OCed, nor CAS latency touched)
@ 1080p on High, no Hairworks, al Postprocessing effects On, HBAO+

One more crash for me around 20 hours in again during a cut scene.

Just seen there's a new patch which may fix this problem for a lot of people. In GoG Galaxy go to Manage, there varify/repare to for the update.