Anthology of Ideas

Tim, if you don’t have a different plugin that is turning it on, it might be on by default in your template. Either way, it might not be configurable from the admin panel. Check carefully through settings, plug-ins, all the pages of admin where a forgotten plugin or widget might be hiding a option to turn it off. Barring any such solution, you could check to see if your comments.php (or possibly awp_comments.php in this case) has the code that you can comment out. Be sure to check your template files first to be sure you are editing the override comments.php (or awp_comments.php), if there isn’t one in your template directory, the next place in the hierarchy would be your plugins directory for the ajaxed wp stuff.

No solutions for you, but maybe a direction to go..
HTH Karen