Thanks everyone for suggestions. What I don't understand is I haven't done a thing to change anything .. it just started to happen today for no reason that I can see. When it happened before to Me (Jade of Sonoma) I removed her from being co-owner of too many houses and that fixed it.
This account is a new one that I closed a few years ago. The characters on this account don't co-own anything. I've had no problems since I re-instated the account a few nights ago.
I'll try a few things before I re-install the whole game again. Something is causing this .. and I don't think re-installing the whole game is the answer .. yet.
I never run UO as Administrator.
YAHOO ! I tried a few things, including checking the files In Electronic Arts for this account .. and lo and behold ..
- - there were too many characters in that file. 9 to be exact.
I had deleted three character and made three new ones. The file was showing all the new and deleted characters instead of showing ONLY the allowed 6 Characters for the account.
So, I deleted the deleted character files.
Then I logged in the characters one by one, but got the fatal message again. So I tried logging in and out a few times. Then suddenly, when logging in ALL the characters one by one, the Valentine's Gifts showed up and the Fatal Error didn't show up again. And the UO file showed only 6 characters.
So what happened exactly? There should have been only 6 characters listed in the File. Why did the deleted characters' files stay in that file?
Did the valentine's gift patch have anything to do with it? We'll never know - - unless others experience the same problem.
*just give it a kick and it might work*