Why memory doesn't go back to normal amount

I was wondering why when I run task manager > performance - it gives me the amount of memory available (e.g. 2000MB), when I run a program, (say Firefox) it drops to a smaller amount of memory that is calculated as being available (e.g. it will drop to 1950MB).

My question is why doesn't it go back to 2000MB when I close Firefox, for example, it will go to 2010 or something.

Thanks in advance.

[dee101g]

The amount of memory being used is determined by the operating system processes being used, the applications open, the processes they are calling, the background applications running (such as your AV application), and many other things. Perhaps Firefox was opened after an application started and that application closed before or at the same time as Firefox.

Available memory is something to worry about if you don't have any or applications close unexpectedly. Anything around 2GB free is nothing to worry about.

[davidchilders]

Also, some cleanup routines are only called when an application closes. There could have been unused memory before you started firefox.

Hope this helps!

/David C.

[hotmatrixx]

Depending on your bild of FireFox, some have memory leak issues, to learn more about this, read this wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak

There is a neat little utility around that can help you with that cleanup. it does it automatically, in the background. you are looking for programs like "FreeRAM", RAM Cleaner, or the freeware one included in glary utilities. it is 'hidden' under in there, but it will do the job of cleaning that ram up when you get close to your freeRAM limit, or when the PC is idle.

http://www.glarysoft.com/products/utilities/glary-utilities/
it's called the "memory optimiser" in the modules section.