The issue is that when looking for a "hotfix", there are multiple hotfix patches and nowhere in the documentation of the hotfixes or in the posts about getting the hotfix does it say which hotfix patches the game to what version.
When I scour the forums, there's the 1.35 hotfix, there's a dotNET hotfix, and then there's random mention of AMD driver hotfixes. Now you've also added in a 4th option which no one has mentioned before, a noCD hotfix.
Additionally, if someone says "patch to the most recent version", apparently this means different things depending on what platform you purchased the game on and what patching mechanism you chose.
For a Steam user, the "most recent version" of the game is 3.4.4.2 (if you right click the witcher2.exe for a version number). But for a non-Steam user, there is no way to patch to 3.4.4.2 since that version is a Steam hotfix.
For everyone else, the "most recent version" is 3.4.4.1. But this is misleading because there is more than 1 variant of 3.4.4.1.
If you update the game with just auto-updates through the launcher, you get what i'll call variant A.
If you update the game with a standalone patch from the game developers website, you can get variant A or you can get variant B.
If you download from the website the patch labelled "REDkit Gamer's Edition, Patch 3.4", you get variant A.
If you download from the website the patch labelled "Patch Gamers and Modder's Edition, Patch 3.4.1", you get variant B.
The problem is, if you do it the manual way, variant B looks like the "most recent version".
But based on what foresight found, variant B of 3.4.4.1 doesn't work with the trainer despite being the same version that everyone says should work with the trainer. There's no version difference and no one can tell why.
This means for everyone that bought the game from GOG, retail, Origin, or pirated the game (no one does this!), if you patch like a normal person and get what looks like the most up to date version off the website, you're making it so your game won't work with the trainer and then when you post on the forums, people say you're an idiot and doing it wrong and won't help you.
[Edited by kbernstar, 7/3/2014 8:13:58 PM]