Honestly, it sounds like you're showing the balloons incorrectly.
It's far easier to simply go to Table->BOM Balloons->Set Region->(Pick a region) then Create Balloon->Show All.
Once all the balloons are there, move them to the correct views and be done with it. Or... alternately you can show...
Our experience with WF5 was similar to yours. We worked with PTC to resolve some of the slowness issues. If you have large family tables (hardware), etc. then many of your problems can be fixed by moving to build code M120 or later.
At M120, new procedures for handling family table data were...
