No, no luck by freshly reinstalling the Jan 2018 version.
I've installed the November version and its working again (locally). November's mashup engine seems to work.
Once published to the power bi cloud service(November version), I intiated a manually sync and it worked, now we back in the game of things.
If we go back to the below notification in December regarding the gateway update it may be a step closer in identifying when the error started accuring for some.
Now...
Do I install a new latest gateway( i dont want to chance updating my existing gateway), Update the SQL server to the latest CU version and reinstall the Jan 2018 release just to see if its more compatible with regards to the highlighted notification.
There goes my day for problem solving, :) Power bi could be saying "Just Walk it off princess."
Just glad for the November workaround to get things working for our department.
Down the rabbit hole we go. . . .