Those "uber 1337 haxxors" finally get the chop

[Isolde]

The unhandled exception: access violation is a generic error which occurs when d2 tries to access memory that is out of bounds. Without the rest of the error log, there isn't anything more I can tell you about it. Though it's likely for the same reason as below:

The spritecache error is because you have a faulty data file (*.mpq) on your machine. Make sure you're not playing off of the CD (by doing a medium or full install). Also, try re-copying d2data.mpq from your CD to your hard drive. For some reason there seems to be a very high rate of failure in the CD stamping process which is compounded by how sensitive d2's graphic compression scheme is to small errors.

you can download a freeware file verification utility (it's only 64K) at zdnet:

http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3001-2248-10127196.html

unzip it into your diablo ii directory, open up the command line, cd to your diablo ii directory, and type

fsum -crc32 *.mpq

this generates checksums for all your data files. the important ones should be:

d2data.mpq e86c2eb5
d2char.mpq eaaec6e9
d2exp.mpq 31a1aa1b
d2music.mpq 63dddde0
d2sfx.mpq 1092953a

If yours don't match with mine, either your CD drive is faulty (which happens surprisingly often) or your CD is scratched or otherwise bad.