Printing from one PC to printer on another takes forever

We have three PCs and a laptop on a wireless network.

We have D-Link DWL G520+ PCI Adapters on the PCs and a Linksys USB adapter
on the laptop. They communicate through a Linksys Broadband Gateway.

Previously there was a dial up connection with a D-Link Wireless Access
Point. At that time we had PC1 and the laptop running Windows XP HE and PC2
and PC3 running Windows 98SE.

We had great problems with the link breaking down both to the internet and
to the printer (Epson R200) which is connected to PC1 by USB.

Our supplier told us that the PCs were old and worn out and if they were
upgraded and running XP everything would be fine.

We eventually succumbed and all are on Windows XP HE.

Everything is fine apart from being able to print PC2. Small documents -
say, a few lines of a Word doc or a small email print out OK but if it is
something of any size then it takes forever. For example printing a 165kB PDF
file can take over 45 minutes. The printer dialogue box showed the status as
Printing...Spooling and the size as anything up to about 9mB before it
printed out. That's if you are lucky - sometimes it will not print at all. It
seems to be the same whatever program you are using.

However, if you open the same document via the wireless link in PC1 and
print from there it will print within seconds.

PC 1, PC2 and PC3 are about eight feet apart (on apexes of a triangle) and
the Linksys Gateway is about six feet above PC2.

This has now gone on for months and I cannot get any sense - can somebody
help please?
--
Simple Swansea Jack

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