Users in my office are gradually migrating from Red Hat 7.2 to 9.

One of our software developers has RH9 running but is encountering a strange memory problem. The computer spontaneously starts running very slowly; upon review, we find that his swap file is up to 80% full, even though his RAM is only 40% utilized. Running top shows that kdeinit is consuming 25% of his memory, but we couldn't determine what components of KDE were the problem. When he closes all programs, the problem persists. When he restarts kicker, however, his swap file drops down to near empty and his memory situation returns to normal, until the problem reappears later without any apparent provocation.

Any suggestions? I appreciate all input.