David,
Yes, I think it was a good idea to place a ProcessDrawEvents() into your code, as it can force updates to the user interface to be processed, and thus updated.
As for the code running slowly, I am not sure of the root cause of this. Maybe you could post a chunk of your code up here, and I could look at it, to see if I can find anything. Thanks, and have a great day.
Daniel McChane
Application Engineering
National Instruments