ay, 1.5.3 is working, even started a local server and its running fine, tried 1.5.4 again and the issue started again...
Actually, tried getting back to 1.5.3 from 1.5.4 again, and issue continued... What the heck... I think mta is creating a file that is corrupted or something, standard mta location was empty when I tried 1.5.3 first time, then installed 1.5.4 again, got the issue back then got back to 1.5.3 but the issue remained...