Question

Is there a way to reset the memory used by SQL Server 2008 R2 to what it would be if I restarted the service? (but I don’t want to restart the service)

I tried using

Checkpoint -- Write dirty pages to disk
DBCC FreeProcCache -- Clear entire proc cache
DBCC DropCleanBuffers -- Clear entire data cache

but I always free up more memory by restarting the service.

Answer 1

I found the excellent webcast Mission-Critical SQLCLR, which explains that the max mem setting in SQL Server does not include memory used by SQLCLR.
To find out how much memory is actually used by SQLCLR, you can run:

select * 
from sys.dm_os_memory_objects 
where [type] like '%CLR%'