i dont know if this is related to the problem, but usually its a good place to start to look for things that have recently changed.
windows updates were asking me to install them, i must have accidently clicked on reboot because it shut the computer down while d2 was running.
so i ignored it and went to bed.
the next day it would not start (newloader just gave a screen flash and nothing else) and after trying to start the plugin using d2se i got this error
i fixed it by coping the mpq files from the lod iso to the diablo 2 folder and it worked fine after reinstalling the mod and adding the gateway
next day same problem
same solution fixed it again
has anyone experienced this problem, know its roots, or how to fix it? because if i didnt save the archived version of everything as a backup i would have had to redownload everything and that was annoying the first time lol.