*spoilers*

I think i'm entering act 3. I've just found a book in the mage's house after the battle for that town. I've gone outside to meet zoltan and the poet after the battle. But when geralt and iorveth walk out the front gates and the loading screen comes up for the next area nothing happens . it just keeps spinning the load icon and the next area doesn't load.

This is something that I've been having problems with, too. Mine has recently gotten stuck on the loading screen randomly.

The trick is to Ctrl, Alt Delete to bring up Task Manager. Don't close the game, though, just close task manager after it throws you back to the desktop. You may have to do this at least twice for it to work. FYI this method is very reliable. In severe cases, (which only happened once from my experience) you'll need to load an earlier save and play through that section again.

You'll know the game has successfully loaded when the spinning loading symbol skips in uneven revolutions.

The strange thing is, ever since I updated my ATI graphics driver, I experienced this problem. I can't think of anything else that may have caused it, since the game worked perfect for me in the past - and it's not the patches either.