OK its me again guess what the thing WORKS it loads fast!!! OK but the code is to load a pic right its a special format (OMF sprite format) and so it loads it and plots it. The problem is it plots really really slowly (and its not cuz of the autoredraw property.) Ok so a friend suggested I tell it to remember the HDC so i'm not calling it again every time, so its not having to find the HDC by UserControl.hDC every time. But the problem is ok I define a variable, but no matter what I do it doesn't work. I say Msgbox UserControl.hDC, then Dim theDC as {itdoesntmatter}, then say theDC = UserControl.hDC, then say msgbox theDC and it gives me the same thing as the first message box. Works right? Wrong. When you call the SetPixelV with theDC instead of UserControl.hDC, it goes by without any error message at all but it just doesn't plot the darn point. Well if you know of how to do this, or if this is not at all the reason why it plots slow, tell me please!!!