3.1 anomolie?

Since upgrading 8.1 to KDE 3.1 i have noticed that if I open the file manager (su) in anything but a root desktop, it opens and displays for a second then disappears. I thought this was SuSE related but on another machine using RH 9 and 3.1 it does the same thing. Has anyone else seen this? Anyone know a fix? Paul