Shortly after upgrading my Win XP box to SP2, I noticed that printing became very slow, MS Word and Excel became very slow and would just freeze up for minutes at a time. I ran across this post about advice from a MS tech, and it worked for me.
1. Click Start, click Control Panel and open Printers and Faxes.
2. In the left column, please choose Add A Printer.
3. Click Next and choose “Local Printer attached to this computer” and click Next.
4. The printer wizard will search the printer and it will prompt you that it cannot find a plug and play printer. Please click Next
5. Click to choose “Create a new port” and choose “Local Port”; click Next button.
6. Type in the server and printer name for the printer in \\ServerName\PrinterName syntax in the pop up open box. Click OK.
7. Use the new port for the local printer.
If you are prompted for a password, there may not be a field in Windows XP in which to enter a password. Reset the password on the destination computer to be blank.
Restart the computer and test if your printer issue has been resolved.