Did you try setting windows 7 compatibility mode in the gothic2.exe? You did the run as admin part but you didn't mention if you did that as well.

I can't get the Data Execution Prevention setting to appear because, possibly, I don't have the Windows 10 Pro version.
Nice job figuring it out for your system and thanks for sharing. I am still getting this violation message at the end of the introduction scene:

Gothic II -- 2.6 (fix) has caused an access violation at address 003A1B68h by attempting to 'read' from
address 00AB40D8h

My system again is:

AMD Ryzen 5 2600X Six-Core Processor 3.60 GHz
16 GB ram
Windows 10 Home Edition

The Gothic II Gold edition which is needed to load The Chronicles of Myrtana appears to work fine. I was able to make a save game after the lengthy initial discussion with the wizard at the start of the game.

The last 2 big games I've purchased from GOG and played on this system are The Witcher III and X4 Foundations--never any crash due to access violation. So, I don't think it's my system causing the problem.

1/19/22 update: I just now installed version 1.1.3. Still getting the same ACCESS VIOLATION crash at the end of the opening cut scene.

2/17/22 Attempted to run version 1.2.2 on my AMD system. Still getting ACCESS VIOLATION when I attempt to exit the opening cut scene.

I had the same issue as the OP: the crash at startup with Call Trace consisting of the single line (NOT the same as Zin-Azshari, which is likely completely unrelated). Similarly, disabling DEP via blacklisting Gothic2.exe in "System Properties -> Advanced -> Performance Options -> Data Execution Prevention -> Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select" didn't work for me. Disabling DEP for programs completely via "Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only" did help, but I wanted a less drastic solution. And since I'm running Windows 8.1, I couldn't use the alternative way to disable DEP via "Exploit protection -> Add program to customize". So here is an alternative way that I found that should work on any Windows 7+.

1. Create "gothic2-disable-dep.reg" file with the following contents:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\Gothic2.exe]
"MitigationOptions"=hex(b):02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00

2. Run it, clicking "Yes" in all confirmations.

This adds an entry to the Windows registry that sets a special DEP mode "Always On but enable ATL thunk emulation" for Gothic2.exe, which is enough to make the game work.

Source for MitigationOptions values: theryuu.github.io/ifeo-mitigationoptions.txt

For reference, my patch version is 1.2.1.

Hi,

none of the above worked for me.
On the German world of Gothic site I've found that the game is not compatible with some of the Ninja scripts.

https://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/threads/1588763-Gothic-Archolos-Access-Violation

Whilst running the game through Spine, Ninja was activited by default. So what eventually did the trick was to deactivate Ninja and every related function.
No sprinting. No quick looting. But the game works at least works now.

Absolutely insane. This did it for me after trying everything possible on this planet.

Running on Win 11 latest updates. Zen 3 with RTX 2070.

Still getting out of memory errors sometimes

Thank you, this is the thing that finally fixed my game!
It's funny that the solution for my Gothic 1 problem came from a thread about a mod for Gothic 2.