Hi Andrew,
Anyway, I don't understand why I would need to do a clean boot because the
problem occurs when I try to put the computer on standby or turn it off, not
when I boot it up. Are there any other solutions?
You're right - a clean boot is very unlikely to solve this problem.
Likewise, power-cycling the machine.
I suspect the error message means what it says: the device driver for
your HP OfficeJet printer is stopping Windows from going into the
Standby state.
Power management is pretty complicated because it relies on cooperation
between the hardware, the BIOS, the operating system, and all the
various devices from other manufacturers which are attached to the
machine (and install device drivers). *In theory*, the ACPI
Specification sets out how everything should work; and every vendor
follows the ACPI Spec; but, uh, it doesn't always work in practice.
Not every device can tolerate the machine going into a low power state
(such as StandBy, S3), and then resuming to a full power state (S0). So
before Windows XP goes into the standby state, it polls each device
driver to get the driver's "approval" to go ahead and power down. If the
device driver replies okay, all is good. But if the device driver
responds negatively, or worse, does not respond at all (eg if the device
driver doesn't even listen for these messages from Windows power
management), then Windows will take what seems to be the "safe" course
of action and not go into Standby.
If a driver does not respond to Widows' request to go into a low power
state, then it displays the message you're seeing. In many (most?)
cases, the message is accurately reporting what happened: "The device
driver for the <blah> device is preventing the machine from entering
standby".
The first line of attack in your case, will be to make sure you have the
latest and greatest drivers for your printer; because the newer the
drivers, the more likely they are to work well with Windows power
management.
The device drivers are written and supplied by the vendor of the device;
in this case, HP. You can get driver updates from teh HP website. Go to:
http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/support.html
enter "OfficeJet J4500" and then follow the instructions to download
your drivers.
You may also need to check with HP Support, and see if this is a known
problem with the J4500 drivers.
As a general health-and-fitness thing, also make sure you have XP
Service Pack 3 installed, plus all teh importnant hotfixes from Windows
Update. There have been several fixes for power management issues, over
the life of the XP product.
Hope this helps,
Andrew
)