OK - But understand that the pagefile has is no effect on memory usage. And very little on general performance. It's merely there to facilitate swapping should that be needed. So IMHO, you are distracting yourself by playing with it.
Now, help me to understand the source: Are you experiencing actual issues centered around memory usage? Or have you simply decided you don't like the number you are seeing?
Because as explained already, (with a link to more detailed info provided), Win 7 uses memory as cache for faster launcing of applications. And memory used in that manner is surrendered to active apps just as if it were empty. Understand that XP also caches. Just that 7's implementation is a couple generations more sophisticated: Apps used and then shut down in XP stay in memory and launch faster the second time around. In 7, the start up routines get pre-loaded and the OS is sophisticated enough to know that you use (Office, SAP, and Outlook) during work hours. And then game on the weekends. And will alter which programs it caches according to your general schedule. Now, given that a certain amount of memory really is needed to run the OS, using some additional amount for caching purposes does result in a higher 'usage' number. But this is normal and intended behavior, and there to keep your machine as responsive as practicable. If it's jsut a number on the screen that's bothering you then IMHO, you're not going to get very far in trying to "Fix" it, because it's not broken.
