GBA LR-GPSP Not Loading After Retroarch Reset

[infinitLoop]

well... i was having some issues with gba game performance and tried adjusting some of the settings in retroarch to try and get them to play better, and got to a point where i figured i would "reset to default" and start fresh, but doing that set retroarch to some kind of desktop mode and i think lost other stuff too and now gba games do not load at all. it just gets to the loading screen then kicks me back to emulationstation and i don't know what error is getting thrown.

i pulled a retroarch config off of another gbz so that the interface would at least get back to "normal" since i couldn't seem to get there just by adjusting the settings in-app. still gba will not run with lr-gpsp. switching to the ls-mgba one loads, but it's terrible on a zero, and i can't get it to load the saved games from the original emulator.

i know the most common issue with gba not loading is the bios - i have the bios, i have it in the right spot, and i have even double checked the md5 and it looks good, and i tried deleting and re-copying it. this was working until whatever i did in the retroarch config reset screwed it up. i also installed just the gpsp (no lr-) and copied the bios over to its location, and that runs the games, but doesn't load the saved state from the original still and i can't seem to get that to register the d-pad on the controller (usb-based button pad - all the input buttons work, but not the dpad).

i've tried re-installing/updating from source for both retropie as a whole and lr-gpsp itself as well as all underlying libs. this is running retropie 4.3.

anyone have any ideas on what went wrong or how to fix it? or how to get the saved state to load somewhere else?