Wow, Boz. Auctiva should be paying YOU because these are the type things their techies should be looking into. You've got to have HOURS into this. I know I do (COUNTLESS), but nothing has helped on my end.
Sorry to say though, your scenario does not match mine.
As for site slowness (creating, saving, jumping scroll bar, etc.). FOR THE PAST 4 DAYS I'VE CHANGED OVER TO FIREFOX. Well, all those little "machine gun noises" are gone when the pages load (I was always using IE8). I can get a lot more work done when I use Firefox, EXCEPT Firefox takes me longer when I'm uploading pics, so there I have to use IE8 (why does Auctiva have to make what functions correctly and what doesn't function correctly with WHICH browser so confusing????)
Anyway, when I have FF open to upload pics, Auctiva doesn't recognize newly added pics on my puter, so I have to refresh the page each time, whereas IE8 reads my newly added pics "live", if that makes any sense.
I work on my laptop downstairs (wireless) and my PC upstairs (hard wired) and I have the same problems with Auctiva on both puters, so I can't chalk mine up to my router (and I'm not going to blame my ISP either, like Auctiva wants me to).
The only work-around I've found is using Firefox. But the HTML EDITOR IS STILL SCREWY IN EITHER BROWSER - DIFFERENT PROBLEMS WITH DIFFERENT BROWSERS. I don't know why they even insert a CRAZY-FUNCTIONING editor to begin with.