Hello from Michigan

[Mike S.]

Good day everyone,

I am Mike from Michigan.  I recently retired from 50 years of careers in automotive, aerospace and computers.  The last 13 years and two days (but who is counting)  as managing a program in quality, environmental and health & safety certifications for North America, South America and Asia Pacific companies.

I have always had a love for photography.  My first real camera was a Nikon F in 1968.  That was followed by 2 ¼, 4 x 5, and 5 x7 " and back to 2 ¼ .  I had a darkroom with a color enlarger and black and white enlarger, temperature controlled color and black and white film to 5 x 7" and print processing to 20 x24".  2004 was the year I traded my 2 ¼ film equipment for 35mm digital.  Like many people I have thousands of slides (35mm and 2 ¼) which I will eventually copy to digital.  I like to take pictures of nature and really enjoy creating panoramas.  I did a 360 degree view using 31 pictures.  I found 9 GB of ram in my computer was not enough so upgraded to 18GB and it works nicely.  My avatar is a picture of the Blue Angels taken in a field a short distance from our condo.  I took the picture 24-Jul-11 so it is current.

What OPR is doing is restoring photographs and at the same time restoring faith in mankind.  I hope to take an active interest in OPR and am doing a lot of studying so when photos are available I can contribute.  

[Hannie]

Hi Mike, welcome to the forum!

What an interesting background you have, seems like a lot of our volunteers have worked for either aerospace or NASA.  Even my husband has worked for NASA from time to time (satelite tracking).

18 GB of ram, that is an enormous amount, would that be 4x4 plus 2 or do they make 8 GB modules?

Hannie

[Mike S.]

Thank you Hannie for the welcome. 

The i7 Processor on the 1366 socket supports 3 modules at a time instead of two so I had 3 x 2GB and 3 x 1GB.  I took out the 3 x 1's and put in 3 x 4's for a total of 18.  The max would be two banks of 3 x 4  or 24GB.

Thank you again.

[Mhayes]

Mike, a big welcome to OPR! You have had a really interesting career and now I hope you can pursue more of the fun things in life. Your background in photography will give you a lot of insight on the photos and will let you branch out with the restoring.

When I saw your avatar I thought of the Wichita Flight Festival going on today in Wichita at the Jabara Airport. No Blue Angels, but plenty of stunt planes.

We are happy you joined and look forward to meeting you in Joplin!

Margie

[Hannie]

Mike, I wish I could have that much memory, especially with some of the Photoshop file sizes.
Unfortunately I still have XPsp3 and it will only use 3 of my 4 GB.
If I wasn't so lazy I would install Windows 7.  I've been having a  lot of problems with BSODs.  Every time I think I solved the error another one pops up a week later and I'm back to square 1. 

Hannie

[Mike S.]

Thank you Margie for the warm welcome.  I have been watching the forum for the last few weeks and if I had not already been committed to join I would because of that.  I decided I don't know what everyone is on but I decided I want some of it.  You need to bottle it and sell it.

Hannie,  The BSOD use to drive me nuts.  I am sure you have tried just about everything including the following:   I have found usually a interrupt problem with one of the PC Cards (tramping on another card) or a bad memory module.  If you have a laptop it will not be the interrupt, everything is on one board and tested to work together.  You may have already tried running with half your memory at a time (assuming you have more than one module).  If not you might want to try it to see if you can isolate to a memory module.  There are memory checking programs you can download.   If it is software it would involve removing all the software and reinstalling until the you find the program causing the conflict.   I one time spent a week doing that and found a tiny little auxiliary program causing the problem.  Who has a week available to do that?   If I had to do it now I am sure I would be ready to be committed (to the place with the padded rooms).  There are also programs to check your registry.  A problem I always had with Windows XP was it was not reliable in releasing memory resulting in out of memory problems.  Windows 7 fixed that.  This computer is almost two years old and first came  with Vista with a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it became available.  I was ready to give up on Windows Vista and buy a MAC (seriously) but 7 came out and works so much better.   When you have an older machine Windows 7 will bring a few problems, such as drivers or I would recommend you upgrade.  We have a 6 color scanner that took us 6 months to sort out the driver issue.  Had I changed to a MAC I would have had the same type of problem as they did not have a driver for my printer for several months to work with the MAC.

You also may have upgraded all your drivers to the latest ones available but what about your BIOS Firmware?   Over the past few years that has been the best area I have found for improvement.  Usually when I go on this long I end it with saying now won't you sleep better tonight  knowing all this but in this case I am not sure anything is of any help.

[Hannie]

Thanks for the tips Mike, all my drivers are updated and I had Memtest86+ running for a couple of nights and all seems fine.  Bios is the latest.
The errors seem to appear independent of the BSOD.  What I have noticed is that there sometimes seems to be an Avast driver involved.  I had already stopped Avast for a week but I still got a BSOD.  I have read many reports on Avast causing BSOD but I have used it for so many years without any problems that I found it hard to believe.  Still, I have exhausted all the other possibilities so I will de-install Avast and use their clean up tool to remove any remnants from the register.

My desktop is Windows 7 ready except for the old scanner.  I really don't feel like changing OS, too much work!

Oh yes, did you know that you can run XP mode on Windows 7?  I did that on my laptop and I can even use the old scanner now on my laptop.

Thanks so much for taking the time to try and help out here, I really appreciate it.   In a couple of weeks I will report on my latest try to get rid of the bug.
(guess that is just what you have been waiting for!  ;D)

Hannie

[Mike S.]

Hannie,

I had thought you already had tried everything so did not have much hope any would help.  I have found many times that the memory testing programs are not that effective and swapping or removing part of the memory is a more effective test to see if the problem follows a particular set of modules. 

Here's hoping your next try with de-installing Avast is effective.

Mike

[glennab]

Hi Mike

I'm usually a little quicker on the uptake in welcoming new members, but just because I'm being a slacker doesn't mean I don't want to send you a warm welcome from West Central Florida.  I gather from what you've described as your experience and expertise that you'll be a wonderful asset to the family.

Once we get cranking on the Joplin restorations, I hope you'll post on the forum (or even before that if you want to add to the chaos - which I find is an activity that usually makes my day!).  As one of OPR's first members, I can attest that you'll find few things as rewarding as working on, and especially completing a restoration.

I'm so glad you've joined us!

Cheers!

GK

[Mike S.]

Good afternoon Glenna,

Thank you for the warm welcome.  Yes I will be posting as soon as photos are available to work on.  As Pat will tell you I usually dive in with both feet when I get involved.   I have heard what a great advantage it is to post photos even if a person thinks they are great.  A fresh eyes look is always welcome and as I see it a way to learn and improve.

Mike

[schen]

Welcome Mike from the other side of the lake.  My first real camera was a Nikomat (or Nikkormat in the USA).  I took a child-rearing hiatus from photography until my youngest graduated from college.  A friend of mine offered me all the equipments in his darkroom.  I declined the offer and bought a digital SLR.  I worked on the data communication and ground support system of WUPPE http://www.sal.wisc.edu/WUPPE/, which flew on STS-35 and STS-67.

If you have been watching the forum for few weeks, you know the ruckus we can cause on the forum in addition to helping each other restoring the photos.   :D

[Mike S.]

Thanks for the Welcome Schen,

When I was walking out of the restaurant from my retirement party on 29-Jul-11, one of the waiters said you can always be a greeter at Walmart.   OPR is my idea of an ideal retirement occupation not Walmart.  Yes I have seen the ruckus and I think it is incredible.

Since you have mentioned your first real camera, I think I will start a session in the Tool Bar "What was your first real camera.  Look for my introduction to Nikkormat and Nikon and discussion there.

[Johnboy]

Welcome to OPR Mike. If you figure out what we are one please share it. I think it is our way of handing stress when the photo doesn't look like you want it to, and that happens a lot. It is said that writing is rewriting. Well the same can be said about restoring damaged photos only it is starting over.

I do like our Blue Angels shot. Having been part of Uncle Sam's canoe club and in the aviation side I tend to like anything involving boats, ships, and airplanes.

Having read your replies I am sure you will have not problem chiming in at any time.

Also glad to have more old timers around here. The advice given by a friend several years ago was to take the first 3 months of retirement and just enjoy it. Then figure out what else you want to do. A Walmart greet might be fine but with OPR you can work any time even in your PJs if you want. Can't do that at Walmart. (Yet some of the people I've seen running around in Walmart look like they are wearing their PJs. So maybe you can.)

Welcome again Mike. Look forward to hearing more from you.

Johnboy

[Mike S.]

Thanks for the welcome JohnBoy,

I am actually answering this in my PJ's, (maybe that's a scarey picture).  I announced my retirement a year before I actually retired and I received over a dozen job offers my last year of employment.  I told everyone that my next career would be with OPR.  As it turns out that is exactly what is happening.  I could not be more pleased.

[Mhayes]

No kidding, look at the time everyone!

Mike has taken off like one of the Blue Angels in becoming an active volunteer for OPR. Today he and Pat are going to do a mini-copy run for a woman whose photos that were ruined in Ohio from flooding. I would credit this to wife Pat, who was a volunteer first and you will see her posting a lot and offering encouragement. Pat also works behind the scenes helping Victoria Walters with new volunteers and checking back with volunteers to see if they are having any problems. Both Pat and Mike will be traveling to the Joplin copy run in October.

I am so proud of what all of our volunteers bring to the table and to see that OPR is beginning to be recognized for our work when disaster strikes.

Margie