windows 10 very slow printing

Dave, i´m not an expert, but I might have the solution for you (at least it worked for me).

I have an on demand printing bussiness and work with 3 different epson printers conected to 2 laptops, both run windows 10 home, with a Ryzen 5 proccesor and more than enough RAM.  As you may think, the solution for me (don't know if it's your case) it is NOT to decrease the printing quality. I just don't have to, i need high quality printings and bought a system that can do the job. Months ago I had the same issue, one of my printers started to do it's job sooooooo slow, didn´t matter from which laptop I would print; all this "tech guys" always say it is "a problem with your printer" and tell you to reinstall the drivers, to restart the print spooler service, or, ta-da! to "print in a lower resolution".  Nothing worked for me.

I searched everywhere, I even sent my printer with a tech service, an obviously they found absolutlely nothing because the problem was NOT the printer, neither the laptop specs, the problem is WINDOWS.  The solution was to do a scan with system file check, an then a Restore Health.  It seems to be a problem with the recent windows system updates (As i said, i´m not an expert, but i figure there is something corrupted in the system after an upgrade).  I doubted at the beggining, but it was the only solution that worked.  However, the problem appeared again two months later (after a system upgrade, cassually), and guess what, I solved it again, same method:

Run CMD from start (as administrator) write and execute: sfc /scannow

When finished, from CMD write and execute: DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth   (be sure to have internet connection).

After this, turn on your printer an try again.

I hope this really solves your problem, while "microsoft experts" find out which one of their awesome system updates is causing this issue.

The problem that David is having is identical to what I am seeing depending how the printer is connected to my PCs. My network printer is an Epson WF-3640. Three PCs share this printer. One laptop and one general PC are WI-fi connected to the printer. The office PC is Direct connected (USB) to the same printer. The WI-fi connected PCs print slow while the USB connected PC prints OK. I copied a word doc to a stick and tested print speed using that same doc to prove that the slowdown was caused by the connectivity and had nothing to do with what type of document was printing. Further research with the person to see when this problem started. Since I use the office PC with the direct connected printer I never noticed a printing slowdown.  After we discussed this it appears that this slowdown began in early fall 2020. So I can't say which MS update caused the problem.  I am working on the problem full time and am searching the forums for a possible fix    changed the Office PC to connect to the printer using WI-fi and it also printed slow. Change the office PC printer connectivity back to direct(USB) my printing speed goes back to good normal speed. All PCs Win 10 20H2 (KB5001330).

Sumit,

I've been printing photos for decades.  This is not the normal slowness from larger files.  This is very slow - a photo that used to take a minute or two from either computer now takes 15 minutes from the laptop - to any of the three printers.

Dave

Didn't work with the command 

showed unknown 

Any other command to resolve?

Hi David,

I am Sumit, an Independent Advisor and a 3 year Windows Insider MVP here to help.

Photos are expected to print slower because of the content. Compared to text, photos have more content.

You can try to decrease the time by decreasing quality in the printer settings.

Go to Settings>Devices>Printer and Scanners>Manage Printer>Printing preferences.

Please note that decreasing quality would lead to lesser quality of photos.