Printer response is very slow with Win 10 Pro

Epson Stylus SX445W All-in-One Inkjet printer

1. I have had this printer since 2013 when it was connected to a Windows 7 PC. The original Windows 7 compatible drivers were installed from a CD.
2. Around 2017 I upgraded the OS to Windows 8.1 (64-bit) and I had to download compatible drivers from Epson since the Win 7 drivers on the CD would not install as incompatible.
3. Around 2019 I upgraded the OS again to Windows 10 Home (64-bit) and Epson only had the same drivers as they had for Windows 8.1.

In all this time the printer responded within 1 or 2 seconds when sending a print to it.

Problem - In January 2021 I bought a new PC with Windows 10 Pro (64-bit) OS updated to version 20H2, build 19042.804. Again, Epson only had the same drivers as they had for Windows 8.1 and they do work but I immediately noticed that the printer is now slow to respond. It now takes 25 seconds from clicking ‘Print’ before the printer starts to print.

The new PC is connected to the printer via the same USB cable as previously and it is a faster machine. My old PC (from 2013) had an overall Novabench score of 1095 whilst the new PC has a score of 1681. The old PC Novabench CPU score was 441 and the new PC is 1049.

I know incompatibility issues get worse as time goes on when the old printer has to talk to a modern OS but I don’t want to have to buy a new A-I-O printer just yet (Even if one can buy one, Covid has pushed prices up) so I was wondering if it was a setting that I need to weak in Windows 10 Professional that was not needed in the previous ‘Home’ version.

Has anyone any suggestions other than ‘buy a new printer’.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks guys. I ran the "Reset & Clear Print Spooler" batch file from Paul's link. This seems to have fixed it. The printer responded in about 2 seconds after that.

It is showing as "Solved" on my PC. Thanks again.