Odd Printer sharing issues

Hi all, first post here and hopefully someone can see what Im missing
here, coz its driving me nuts!!!

Ok here is the scenario. I have my desktop PC installed with Windows
Vista Ultimate Ed (32 bit). This PC is hard wired into my WRT54G
(tomato firmware) router. Connect to this PC I have an Epson CX5000
printer that is shared on the network. My shareing is password
protected and the user who needs to connect to my shares is set up on
Vista also.

The other PC is a Laptop with Vista Home Premium (32 bit) installed.
The laptop connects and accesses all shares fine (both read and write)
and sees my Printer fine. I have set this printer up on the laptop and
all seems ok.

Until that is I print from applications on the laptop.
When I send a print job from say Word, it takes over 5 mins to actually
start the printer and print. During this time Word goes into (not
responding) and will stay that way until the print job is complete. Its
not just word either, tried wordpad, Notepad, IE, and they all take upto
5 mins to print a single page!.

I have checked the event logs on my main PC and I dont see anything
untoward. The computer connects with the right credentials and
disconnects cleanly. It just takes an age to print a page. This is
driving my wife nuts (who is the user of the Laptop) as her PC
basically becomes unresponsive while it does a simple print job.

Im totally running out of ideas, I have disabled Firewalls, Password
protected sharing etc, etc and it still does it. I have moved the
Laptop so its right next to the Router and it still does it (so its not
a wirless signal issue).

Copying files is fine to and from the PC's is nice and fast no slow
downs etc...

Im tearing out whats remainging of my very thin hair here.... any
ideas???


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Cythrawl