Just a FYI, after getting pissed off at buying Gothic I & II for Windows 7 x64 w/ nvidia with it not working AT ALL, I checked on both ubuntu GNU/Linux 9.10 and 10.04 with wine, and it worked like a charm. As a long time GNU/Linux user, I never once thought I'd recommend it if you're having gaming issues but it solved mine.

It is too much to hope that this would work in a Virtual Machine I guess.
I was thinking of installing Ubuntu on my machine w/ Wubi so maybe this is a good 'excuse' to do so (I have Win 7 x64 w/ nVidia as well).

As an FYI:
Gothic 2 works on Linux with a few small caveats:
a) You seem to have to disable the intro movie
b) You have to disable music
I installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS via Wubi today and checked to see if I could get Gothic II going (it won't run properly on my 7x64 installation). After reading some FAQ's on the net I figured that I needed to disable some things (mentioned above) in order to get it to stop crashing.
Pros: Installation ran great, game runs smooth as butter even in Windowed mode
Cons: No music, movies in game (can't disable them) display as black screen w/ audio.
Going to see if I can tweak some things to get the movies running properly, or at least cut them out or something.

Music does work you just need to do this:
cd ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32
if [ "`sha1sum < dmband.dll | sed 's/ .*//'`" != "72d574b557865850247e58ee69af84e37ef75ac2" ]; then
wget --referer="http://www.dlldump.com" "http://www.dlldump.com/dllfiles/D/dmband.dll" --output-document=dmband.dll
fi

if [ "`sha1sum < dmcompos.dll | sed 's/ .*//'`" != "bc775f826398e9c6a656acbd41808217c995781e" ]; then
wget --referer="http://www.dlldump.com" "http://www.dlldump.com/dllfiles/D/dmcompos.dll" --output-document=dmcompos.dll
fi

if [ "`sha1sum < dmime.dll | sed 's/ .*//'`" != "4dd11c042fd420325044ea379935a10102b0cc00" ]; then
wget --referer="http://www.dlldump.com" "http://www.dlldump.com/dllfiles/D/dmime.dll" --output-document=dmime.dll
fi

if [ "`sha1sum < dmloader.dll | sed 's/ .*//'`" != "4250676edacc33c54c6db511c812ff71571c305a" ]; then
wget --referer="http://www.dlldump.com" "http://www.dlldump.com/dllfiles/D/dmloader.dll" --output-document=dmloader.dll
fi

if [ "`sha1sum < dmsynth.dll | sed 's/ .*//'`" != "7a7843d5f385795d6cc18f86e78c191ecd524424" ]; then
wget --referer="http://www.dlldump.com" "http://www.dlldump.com/dllfiles/D/dmsynth.dll" --output-document=dmsynth.dll
fi

if [ "`sha1sum < dmusic.dll | sed 's/ .*//'`" != "4eb4aa8f545c0073d012bfc69ceb837098db4f2e" ]; then
wget --referer="http://www.dlldump.com" "http://www.dlldump.com/dllfiles/D/dmusic.dll" --output-document=dmusic.dll
fi

if [ "`sha1sum < dmstyle.dll.zip | sed 's/ .*//'`" != "e860c26e23310a5765c2e2110e40c5c076503643" ]; then
wget "http://www.dllbank.com/zip/d/dmstyle.dll.zip" --output-document=dmstyle.dll.zip
fi
unzip dmstyle.dll.zip
cd ../temp
echo "[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Wine\\DllOverrides]" > override.reg
echo "\"dmband\"=\"native\"" >> override.reg
echo "\"dmcompos\"=\"native\"" >> override.reg
echo "\"dmime\"=\"native\"" >> override.reg
echo "\"dmloader\"=\"native\"" >> override.reg
echo "\"dmsynth\"=\"native\"" >> override.reg
echo "\"dmusic\"=\"native\"" >> override.reg
echo "\"dmstyle\"=\"native\"" >> override.reg
regedit override.reg
also try turning scaleVideos off, the winehq pages for both gothic I and gothic II explain how to fix these caveats, previous script stolen from playonlinux's app.

Ah, thanks for that! Just put that into a bash script file and execute it right? (been a very very long time since I used Linux for any extended period of time)
I installed playonlinux, but I didn't see a way to install the GoG version since it asked for a DVD/CD mount location - didn't think about the scripts that go behind it.
I have obviously been away from Linux too long - didn't even cross my mind to check WineHQ, that used to be my first stop for any WINE related questions :/ ah how the memory fails when you need it.
Thanks again! +rep

According to evmiller the games will work in VMware Player. VMware Player is quite easy to set up, and it's also partly compatible with other virtual machine formats if you have one set up already.
EDIT: If you have Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate you can get a working XP install by installing Windows XP Mode (you just need XP Mode itself for this, not the Virtual PC part) and importing it into VMware Player from the File menu.

I condensed everything I did to make GOG.COM Gothic I run perfectly into a shell script:
Things to keep in mind:
* If you still get crashes, make sure in 'winecfg' or "Wine Configuration" that you've selected an audio device (Click "Audio", select ALSA or OSS and then "Ok:").
http://www.trollbot.org/gothic.sh.txt

Thanks for that - that script doesn't seem to work well for Gothic 2 though :/.
I modified it with the proper paths (Gothic 2 Gold rather than Gothic) and other pertinent information, but I get new crashes [Sound device enabled as ALSA]. Also the files that it goes to download seem to exist already in the GoG Gothic 2 install (for the music). Maybe I have to overwrite them?
Gonna have to fiddle with the settings a bit, if I get something working I will add another script in this thread specific to Gothic 2.

I'm new to the Gothic world and simply did it for the 1st since I've never played it before, maybe I'll check out 2 briefly to make a script for it.
Ugh, I knew I avoided trying to run it for a reason, forced intro video to 'new game' (required to test music) had tons of spoilers. In any event, I got gothic 2 running like a champ on 10.04 with music. The secret is to set 'windows 2000' in winecfg. Also note that that virtual disk stuff may fail, you might have to click 'OK' through some 'smart heap' library messageboxes, and it may have some errors after quitting, but none of those seems to affect gameplay/cutscenes.
Here's the shell script:
http://www.trollbot.org/gothic2.sh.txt
Beautiful bean footage: http://www.trollbot.org/gothic2.png

I'm just pissed off, because these steps were also meant to make Gothic II work on mac os x (there was even an article on crossover games explaining the procedures). I'm not an idiot or impatient when it comes to making games work, and I got as far as making the game run (using wine 1.2), but all I see is the title screen and hear the music (even though I disabled music in gothic.ini), there's no text in the title screen or mouse cursor, just the background picture??? Maybe it's these dang 320M GPUs, but I'd appreciate it if anyone has any advice on what might have gone wrong.
I'm using the GOG version of Gothic 2 Gold

for a) try disabling video scaling in the gothic.ini file (I believe its under /System/). The videos should appear then, although smaller. Editing the ini-file for bettter Graphics is recommended anyway.

I've got Gothic (1) running smoothly with wine (1.4) on my Archlinux through the playonlinux interface. Now I just need to wait for the Gothic Reloaded Mod and I'll play it again!

I was actually coming to this forum exactly to ask if anyone has positive or negative feedback on Gothic running on Windows 7.

I purchased the games on disc, it installed ok but was a total disaster for playing since controls did not work at ALL for both Gothic 1 and 2. With the packaging done by Gog, Gothic 2 worked perfect but I am still hesitant about first one.

I see from here it certainly does have issues - but has anyone actually been able to play Gothic alright with Windows 7?? I am actually not very sophisticated user as such when it comes to computers, so sorry if I apprear repeatitive to other comments, but on which HW do you have your Linux, and could what you did be done as a partition in Mac OS?

Or should it be done as partion or virtual machine in the Windows environment running on the same Mac for simplicity of installation?

My issues actually relate to the fact that after upgrading to later version of iMac, the bootcamp did not support XP anymore - I never really wanted to go to only Win7... And I hate not being able to play the whole series!

Edit: for spelling.

Gothic 1 works perfectly on Windows 7.

Thx for affirmation. Umm... into the cart then, and fingers crossed! I might cry out of frustration though if it does not work, lol, but let us see that as on opportunity to try to learn how to install linux, then. :)

I've had big problems (had game in process, but it wasn't loading at all) with getting gothic to run on my windows 7 64 bit, I tried all solutions on found on sites and none were working. I found solution accidently. I just had to close my chrome before starting the game. Now both G1 and G2 work as intended.