finalforutne

It didn't seem to be associated with any file in specific, as it would fail on a random patcher and set of files.  I tried to raise the patcher memory allocation to 1GB, which still ended up in one failing.  I couldn't set it any higher because Windows wouldn't allow me to - which I later found out it to be some limitation on the 32-bit java executable. I proceeded then to remove this limitation as specified here:
 
https://www.jaloonz.com/2008/04/enabling-large-address-aware-for-games.html
 
on java.exe.
 
Then I set it to 1.5GB allocation, which seemed to have fixed the issue.
I do have about 250 active plugins after all.