I recently switched to an ISO, my cd drive is hit and miss, now when i try to play game, or preview a map, it closes. No error message given, and no errorlog created. Could this be because I did not use the program on the worms2d.info site with protected game option? I used NTI CD & DVD-Maker 7, which had no such option.

The game may close without an error message during loading because it failed to read a file from the CD. Your CD image may be corrupted.

Ok i used cd clone and made an image, however, i got a message saying scanning bad sectors and everything slowed down while copying. i tried playing the game no problems yet, but what could/should i expect?

was it scanning for bad sectors, or had it found bad sectors?

There's only one way to find out... that is, to play until (if at all) the problems appear. The bad sectors could have been in music files, or in some soundbanks, or some mission maps.

Most likely things that would happen (I know this from experience, I have a scratched up CD):

Some missions and/or their maps, are messed up
When a specific music track is playing, the game crashes at one consitent point in the music (when it becomes unreadable)
Some soundbanks crash the game
The game crashes every time whilst loading (that obviously hasn't happened)
Some underwater sprites are messed up or crash the game (probably won't happen)
If you use a hack to get a different water colour, that might crash the game (don't confuse this with the crash that happens if you try that with a sold-out software or US disc, those actually lack the files)
Possibly some more things

was it scanning for bad sectors, or had it found bad sectors?

I believe it said "scanning bad sectors 2***** - 2*****". The * were some numbers in the hundred thousands I believe. Thankfully no errors yet.

I would recreate the CD image but use the slowest speed for reading the Disc. The slower a disc is read, the more reliable.