Abnormal RAM usage when all main applications are closed

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Above is a screenshot of my Activity Monitor. It shows that although all my main applications are closed, 3GB or RAM ( out of my 4GB ) are used. This has been happening for the past week and at some point it uses almost everything for no apparent reason.
I know this is very general, but anything that goes through your head that might be the root of it, or might provide a way of finding out, please write it down and I will try it and provide an answer wether it worked or not.

I am running Mac OS Version 10.7.5 . I have looked at third party Kernel Extensions and the only one I had was from Virtual Box, which I deleted, and this is still happening.
 

bobtomay

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Your Mac's Specs
15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
There is nothing unusual there. Current memory in use is ~1.5 GB - the total of Wired and Active.
You should find that is approx the same as will be used after a re-boot.

Inactive contains stuff that has recently been used by the memory so that if you want to start the same thing again, it launches/runs much faster and does not need to be re-loaded into memory. However, Inactive memory can be used by anything and should be considered as Free memory for your purposes. And, it's done this since I started using Macs.
 
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There is nothing unusual there. Current memory in use is ~1.5 GB - the total of Wired and Active.
You should find that is approx the same as will be used after a re-boot.

Inactive contains stuff that has recently been used by the memory so that if you want to start the same thing again, it launches/runs much faster and does not need to be re-loaded into memory. However, Inactive memory can be used by anything and should be considered as Free memory for your purposes. And, it's done this since I started using Macs.

The problem is that if I start a browser and open up let's say about 10 tabs with FB and a site with a lot of Flash animations, then available goes down to 7 MB Ram and everything becomes very very slow. During this time Inactive memory stays at the same levels. Are there known issues about Inactive not being cleared when there is a lack of Free RAM?

At some point this week I opened Finder, or connected my external monitor, and the screen froze for 1 min before resuming to normal. I've been using my MAC for 3 years and I've never seen this happen and I haven't installed anything special recently.
 

bobtomay

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Your Mac's Specs
15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
Safari will do that even without Flash - Flash is going to exacerbate the issue.

Have you ever done any maintenance on your machine?
If so, with what?
What version of OS X are you running?
How much free space on your drive?
 

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