Memory recovery programs

[Dswissmiss]

My memory usage goes through the roof sometimes, so I got Cacheman 5.11, but was wondering whether there are any better programs out there. Do they even help... and what are other ways to free up memory?
I know which programs usually cause this (filesharing), so thats not the problem, but even without them running it sometimes happens. Also, is ZoneAlarm known for high memory usage? Vsmon.exe seems to always be up there.

thank you
Dswissmiss

[reboot]

I was tempted to say, "Oh no, not again!"
VSMon will always "be up there", because it's monitoring your internet traffic.
Uninstall the so called memory management programs, and buy more RAM.
It's meant to be used, let Windows use it!
At the risk of repeating myself yet again, here's a copy of a previous post:

The single biggest problem with mem boosters (other than the fact that they use memory to conserve memory), is their inability to properly decide what should be freed up, and what should be left in RAM.
All memory boosters do only one thing, transfer RAM contents to the swap file. Period.
Some do it slightly better than others, but just when you want instant access to an application, you find it's slowed to a crawl, because it has to read the information from the swap, and not RAM. This is extremely annoying when working with graphics, and can cause apps to hang when swap reads contain errors.
There are ways to improve how Windows natively handles ram/swap, depending on which version of Windows you're using.
It also has a lot to do with how much system RAM you have. Real onboard RAM, not virtual mem...
There are two other ideas that do work really well, particularily for Win9x based machines. Set a fixed swap size, and if possible, put it on the first section of the fastest drive in your system, although having an abundance of onboard RAM makes this redundant, as swap usage will be negligable, especially in 2k/XP.
VCache settings can help enormously, particularily when running more than about 340 meg of RAM in Win9x. Along with another trick called "ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1" in the [386ENH] section of system.ini
I prefer to manually dump RAM, when I'm ready for it, not when some other 3rd party app decides, and this is almost too simple to do.
On all my systems (currently 5 in the house), I run a tiny, one line .vbs file to empty RAM to the swap file, in effect, doing the same thing the boosters do, and having the same effect as a restart, without restarting.
Open notepad, and type one line, close, and save it as "freemem.vbs", including the quotes, or you end up with freemem.vbs.txt, which won't work.
I save it in the QuickLaunch bar, to hit whenever I want, usually after one session with a memory intense app, and before the next. It only takes a second or two to run, and it's done.
Here's the line:
FreeMem = Space(128000000)
Adjust the number in brackets depending on how much system RAM you really have. The 128000000 is good for systems with 512 meg or more. If you have 256 meg, cut that number in half to 64000000, and if you have 128 meg, cut it in half again to 32000000.
Now you've created your own memory manager, without having it reside in memory, or start up with windows.
It will not free up the total amount in brackets every time, but it will free up as much as is possible, leaving the necessary stuff in RAM needed to run Windows properly.
BTW, this works, and has been tested in ALL Windows versions, except Win95a (assuming it works, it's just not been tested).
[/rant]