printing with XP

have you tried other versions of the printer driver? what is the model? are you using your w2k for a print server? is it usb? parallel? did this used to work? what has changed? anything in the event logs? can you reproduce this at will? does it happen when logged in as administrator- domain or local?
how is everything else working? logins from xp's snappy? browsing fast?

This is occurring because the drivers on the Win2000 print server are the drivers for Win2000. The WinXP users are being delayed because the drivers are not "meant" for their OS.

You can do one of the following:

Obtain the WinXP drivers for your model printers and install them on the Win2000 server (thereby resolving all the WinXP users printing delay).

OR

You can install the WinXP drivers locally (as a local printer) and then re-direct the Port on the Printer Properties to print to the network printer IP address (this tends to work much better, but unfortunately it requires hands-on work on each of the computers -- unless you have spohisticated users who can setup the port to point to an ip address).

Yeah, I agree, it's the print drivers the XP machines got from your Win2K print server.
Here is a Technet article that tells you how to "push" printer drivers FROM a higher version of Windows to a lower one:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=263090
This article was written for pushing Win2k drivers to a NT4 print server, but it still works with XP pushing to a Win2K server. I've done this myself, so that's why I know it still works!