I just downloaded the new patch (1.24). I logged on to B.net and as soon as I should get the news screen, I get a fatal error.
I asked a friend about it and he said he couldn't even download the patch because he didn't have the files storm.dll, war3.exe, game.dll. which obviously can't be true. What to do?

I think i have the same problem:

FATAL ERROR!

Exception: 0xC0000005 (ACCESS VIOLATION) at 001B: 6F370A6F

The instruction at '0x6F370A6F' referenced memory at '0x00000005'.
The memory could not be 'read'

See here:
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=20656