Similar to some of the difficulties experienced above, I've been playing on a LAN with two computers (one Desktop, one Laptop) and have recently installed the game on a new laptop, patched it up to 1.52 and removed the autosave (set to 0) in the .ini and .bak files.

However, when using the game on this new laptop the game freezes completely on a black screen with just a message saying 'autosaving' in the top left corner on every single/multiplayer startup. I've double checked the .ini and .bak files and they definitely have autosaves turned off!

Is there anything I'm doing wrong and is there anything I can do to rectify this problem - thanks!!

any ideas on this at all folks???

Please let me know if I've missed something really obvious or I've not searched a known fix!

Thanks again!

Check this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=153780&highlight=autosaving+freez). If your graphics in the new notebook could be an issue like PerfectDrug's you may want to consider updated or 3rd party drivers. He used them to solve the "freezing at autosaving" issue.
Some of the steps in the "Fix-It List" that's stickied might also be helpful if your hardware specs are borderline ... or even awesome. This is Civ4 after all ;)
Post a dxdiag.txt if you continue to have issues. Good luck.

Success - many thanks - installing Omega Driver 4.12 did the trick!