JMR,
A panel handle is just a number held in a variable that identify a specific panel loaded into memory. The error should only appear when you discard a panel and then try to reference it again, or when you use the panel handle in a function with a control not contained in that panel.
The first thing here is to make sure that the value of the handle does not changes for any other reason that a LoadPanel or a DiscardPanel, you can use something like DebugPrintf("%d\n", panelHandle) all over that part that generates the error. If you know that the value of the handle is not changing then you may want to reinstall the CVI run-Time Engine; you can find it in http://www.ni.com/downloads/
I hope this information helps, let me know if you have any question or mo
re information on what is going on.
Juan Carlos
N.I.