I have a QT main GUI that runs a QThread object in WIndows XP and QT4 v4.4.3

My question is:

what tips do folks have for improving main GUI responsiveness while a thread spawned from main GUI is running? There's stuff that updates on the main GUI from the thread, but it takes 5 seconds or more for the GUI's event loop to handle any mouse event.

should i use timers or mutex's or some other trick to resolve this?

thanks