Losing my RAM

[mbalensiefer]

Hello again!!

 I have 4G of Ram installed in my Vista-running PC. For some reason, sometime over the past two months, some application (or incorrect setting) is eating it all up.
 I have noticed significant slowdowns in Photoshop. When I Cont-Alt-Del, and tab over to my Resources monitor; all but maybe 3 megs of Ram is being used...sometimes this number is at zero. I percieve this to be some sort of incorrect caching that either my OS or Photoshop is doing. When I close PS, I still lose my remaining memory space as listed under Resources.

Is there a way to get back my memory? I've heard of applications that "force" Ram open, again. My PC is now oftentimes slower than it was under 1G of Ram.

 Michael

[kaelaria]

Click on the Processes tab to see what is using it.

[mbalensiefer]

Thanks.

 I have what I call "RAM creep".

 With 4G of Ram installed, my computer shows 3581 meg available. "Cached" is at 2620 megs used, and "free" is at zero.

 To start off, I had opened Photoshop, some files, and watched my available RAM drop. I then closed PS, immediately "winning" a cool gig back; and then watched over 15 minutes as the gig was thiefed back from me.
 Windows Explorer, as of writing, was only using 96k, svhost, 74.8k, and these numbers do no seem to increase with time. Simply, more of my RAM is "cached"; which slows me down considerably.

Michael