Windows 7: Recovering Ram

I was wondering if there is someway to recover ram after opening and closing programs? I notice after a while my % of ram used creeps up over time. I know each time you open and close things ram just stays used. Is there some way to clean or close unused ram? I know you can reboot to clean things but I have 8 GB or ram and only outlook open and I am at 74%. I have done the ctrl+alt+del and looked at what is running but don't know what I can close or stop.

Thanks for the help

T

If you like, you can try to disable superfetch. It caches programs you frequently use into ram so it loads faster but this will consume ram.

to disable superfetch go to start - in the search box type "services.msc" --- go down the list until you find superfetch and right click "disable". Then restart and use your computer like you normally would. After a while then check how much ram is being used.

if you find that disabling superfetch is slower, do the steps again but right click start and check start automatically

hope this helped.

Also in task manager what program is using the most memory? ctl-alt-del and go to the Processes tab and click the Memory (private working set) table and it should order the programs that use the most memory from lowest to highest. post what uses the most.


EDIT::

Another thing to try is go to start- and in the search box type "msconfig" --- go to the start up tab and uncheck any programs you dont want to run when you start windows.

that's not normal. Outlook cannot possibly be eating 4 GB and all stuff loaded to RAM by super prefetch and left in RAM after you close an application is always ready to be deleted in case you need that space, and isn't shown as "occupied" in Task Manager.

Can you post a screenshot of Performance Monitor, with the tab about RAM use open, so we can see what is going on with our eyes as well?

to open Performance Monitor, open the Start menu and write "perfmon" (without the ") in the search box and click on the result, or from Task Manager's performance tab there is a button called Resource Monitor that starts it.
This tutorial explains how to post screenshots in this forum.

Soon as I get to my computer I will get the info and try the suggestions and report back. Thanks for the help.

Ok here is part of the Process view. Hope this works not sure how to paste it in here.
Oh and the only thing I have open is 4 IE tabs, and outlook.

That's not what I asked.

Could you please do what I asked in post 4? In that post I also link a tutorial about posting screenshots in this forum.