Is the stack trace of the originating exception available?
I mean: is there more exception log after the reported snippet?

We have no knowledge of a different behavior across different versions of Windows.
As a test, please try adding the following element as a sibling of <port>8888</port> in the <rmi_connection> block:
<data_port>7777</data_port>
(where 7777 stands for a free port)