slow printing in photopaint and publisher

[slam]

Was using win98 and printing to hp 2250 was fine.
now upgraded machine to winxp and printing large docs from
both photopaint and ms publisher take forever before they even start printing. from photopaint I've notices cpu usage jumps to 100% .
system
win xp pro
amd 2600
512 ram
raptor 36 drive
maxtor 20 g that contains old data

photopaint file is local to the raptor.
temp file is located on raptor

photopaint patched to 397
publisher patched to current online system.

current driver for printer

static page file 1024 M

[BipolarBill]

I get the same thing when printing large images - even over my HP 1220SE black/white laser. I'm maxed out on printer RAM too.

[slam]

printing to driver hpa instead of pcl5c speeds up dramatically