No problem Dogfish, happy to help!
Not patching to 1.2 is almost guaranteed to be the killer, a lot of people get caught out by that it seems. It's been so long since I installed I didn't think to mention it!
To switch off online saves, start the launcher but do not load the game. Look in the launcher settings menu (where you find the offline mode option) - there'll be an option called 'enable save game syncing'. Deactivate this - the server will still check for saves when SH5 loads, but saves will only be stored on your hard drive.
Let us know how you get on
