If I knew the answers to your questions I wouldn't have needed to post anything on this forum to begin with.  No, the hatches I am looking for are not on my hard drive, perhaps because Autodesk instructed me to delete any Autodesk-related files prior to the reinstallation.  But GETPAT is supposed to give you access to hatches you DONT already have.  An example of a standard hatch that GETPAT does not work on is ANSI31, but who cares, I don't need GETPAT for standard hatches, I need it for what it was created for, which is custom hatches.  A month ago I could type GETPAT, and instantly have access to whatever hatch I selected (some of which are very complex) via executing a new hatch or matching properties with an existing hatch.  As of a few days ago that ability disappeared.

I guess what I was hoping for was a solution, or maybe another .lsp routine that performs a similar function. 

I did completely delete the lisp routine and re-downloaded it.  No luck.  When trying it with various hatches a few times it asked me if I want to overright the pattern, but this was only a couple times after maybe 50 attempts on different hatches.  It also doesn't seem to work on standard hatches, but it wouldn't help me if it did. 

A month ago I could GETPAT every hatch that I had (hatches I brought with me from another office), perfectly.  Now it doesn't recognize any of the ones I brought.  The only other difference I made was reinstalling cad2017 at the suggestion of Autodesk as a part of the solution they gave me to fix a Revit problem I was having.  Perhaps somehow the reinstall is the problem.  The .pat files are still stored in the same location as before, however.