Joe, I suggest you re-test - I disable CIR in my D52450 current BIOS, and it keeps powering up when I press the IR Pause button or the IR Power button.
Someone else said there is some setting about disable wake from USB or something like that which might be the workaround (I haven't tried that - mine is default).
Note that I did not unplug the AC power cord after disabling IR in BIOS (I seem to recall behavior sometimes varies if you unplug the power cord, for example I think that step may have been necessary after some Bluetooth or WiFi driver update).
