I am wondering if there is a way to change this functonality in windows - everytime an external usb device powers off or if I unplug it, my laptop wakes up from sleep, which is really annoying. This is on Windows XP.
It can be a disk, a mouse,... Type doesn't seem to matter.
I had the same issue with Windows 7 and my mouse. It turns out, that you have to go to the device manager, find the device (in my case it was the mouse) and turn off the option "Allow this device to wake up computer".
If you have the same problem with many devices, I guess you are going to have to change it for each device.
Can you check the BIOS settings during bootup, and see if wake on USB is enabled ?
As qbeuek mentioned, you should be able to disable this functionality in your device manager:
I had the same issue with my wireless Logitech mouse on my Windows 7 laptop.
Although several programs or hardware suites allow you to set "wake up computer" option. If there is no such setting in your device manager, you could even try to set it in your hardware suite...
