Hibernate not available on laptop

My Dell Inspiron 1150 was running more slowly than normal, so yesterday I reloaded XP Pro, which is its original OS. I used another Dell XP disk, as the original recovery disk wouldn't let me load an older version over a new one. Now the machine works normally, but I am unable to activate Hibernate, which worked just fine before. I get the following error message after I check the Enable Hibernation box in Power Options Properties:

"Power Policy Manager unable to reserve hibernate file. The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process. "

I looked at the running processes in both Task Manager and Administrative Tools and nothing gave me any clues. I read Microsoft's Knowledge Base article re: Hibernation but nothing seemed to apply.

This is not a matter of life and death, as the computer gets very light usage. But it is convenient to close the top and walk away, and subsequent power up time is substantially reduced, which is an issue with a Celeron processor.
Any ideas?

 

One of your startup items may be preventing access to the hybernate file.
You may want to try a clean boot, instructions here; enable hybernation; then change back to normal startup (instructions at same link)

I had a the same problem a few years ago and this is what the support folks at Microsoft said to do. Can't find the original email or I would post it here.

Mitch

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Thanks for your response. I tried the clean boot instructions and Windows informed me that I had to be logged in as an Administrator, but I already was. I think I'll reformat the drive and reinstall XP and see if that cures my ills.